nazret.com Merkato Blog

Ethiopia - In a “booming economy”, the south is far poorer than up north!

By Wondemhunegn Ezezew*

Ethiopia’'s economic achievements in the last four or five consecutive years are said to be consistently marching in a promising direction. Official statistics flaunt that Gross Domestic product has been increasing at 10 plus percent in the specified time period. Flower export is thriving at a rate which is likely to overtake the traditional coffee in the next half a decade or so. Government reforms in areas of licensing and land acquisition have facilitated the influx of Foreign Direct Investment, especially in agribusiness and related sectors. Farmers, the government says, are enviably counting in millions and consequently rural poverty is declining. Even there was news that domestic supplies could not meet the ever growing demand from the construction industry. Thus everything is booming! Very recently Prime Minister Meless Zenawi, presenting mid term performance report to the House of People’s Representatives, ‘confidently’ reassured MPs that the economy will not be swerving from this lush track and GDP will grow by 10.8 percent during the fiscal year. We keep on burgeoning!

These are all what Meless and his spin doctors claim. Most of the claims are unfounded. Data can be inflated or falsified. We may fabricate facts and figures to seduce donors and to guarantee a sustained inflow of foreign loans and grants that fill TPLF coffers. For the last almost two decades they had managed to mislead Uncle Sam, the International Monetary Fund, the World Bank, the European Union, the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development and other bilateral and multilateral international sources of economic development assistances. Though these organizations too often take official reports at face value, at the end of the day, all attempts by TPLF to create a whimsical economic realm are proving to be utter lies. It has been like “covering the head and exposing the legs,”to use our proverb.

Pragmatic situations attest to head spinning economic wretchedness and to worsening chaos than to TPLF declared prosperity and improvement in people’s standard of living. Each year we have millions of people food insecure despite the fact that ‘food security’ has been a deafening slogan of the ruling regime since 1991.The cumulative effects of TPLF economic and financial mismanagement have finally exploded and are all tangible and visible far and wide in the country. Virtually all Ethiopians have fallen victims to “Meles's Dutch disease” that has been spreading rapidly and mercilessly both in rural and urban populations. In reality this disease has nothing to do with the so called economic boom rather it represents a fully fledged “pandemic” that the regime had been concealing the last 17 years. Thus it is a seventeen-year-old disease which gradually developed into chronic malady as time went by and recently it burst out smashing the age-old networks of cover-up and disguise. They kept on cheating us that the economy was healthy; today we witness that it is dead sick! “He, who hides his illness, finds no cure.”

On the eve of our Millennium celebration, Meles and his ginger group were all bragging about conjuring up a prosperous nation in the next twenty years, a nation that would stand on par with middle income countries (nations whose real per capita income valued at official exchange rate is around $3000 taking the 2006 exchange rate as a base ($27,000 in PPP for Ethiopia!)). To turn this “vision” a reality and to make the 10 percent growth sustainable, they had invited Professor Joseph Stiglizt-the 2001 economic laureate and a former WB chief economist-to give them professional advice on how to keep the economy growing at constant pace. The Professor, as usual, demonstrated his combined intellectual and professional integrity. He did not choose not to disappoint the PM as most Westerners do; rather, he commended the positive and bluntly put what was negative: «The south was far poorer than anywhere else we had seen in the country. Many of the children had swollen bellies, typically a sign of serious malnutrition. Even in the larger villages, the children lacked shoes. There were far fewer schools and clinics than we had seen up north and we did not see any of the community self[-]help projects like the one we saw up in Tigray aimed at fighting land erosion, raising the water table and promoting fruit orchards.»

The crux of the matter is that what have they been doing since entering Addis? If the south is better endowed with resources than the region up in the north, why is it that it is far poorer? How can we leave the south without schools, clinics, and other basic social facilities and services when we create huge industrial conglomerate in the north virtually from scratch? Why did the economic affluence that they told us about fail to trickle down to the south? Who would answer?

Shame on TPLF!!!! One of the key reasons that sent the honchos of TPLF to the bush was purely economic. They had been accusing HIM Haile Silassie I of neglecting Tigray province (in reality famine and miserable economic hardships that plagued Wollo/Amhara were no different from those that devastated Tigray).Today, after controlling the pearl of power, the Meless play the suicidal game of ignoring the south, and in their turn, they face the same accusations that they were making against the monarchy.

Related Links

Recent Articles by the author

It completely makes no sense to claim substantial economic growth and development when, in a seventeen-year-old-journey, one region takes the lead and the other(s) could not have access even to basic infrastructural facilities. Professor Joseph mentioned only what he saw in the south, but Somali and Afar regions are the most forgotten enclaves. Life is really miserable in these regions even by Ethiopian standards! In 2005/06 the gross enrollment rates at primary and secondary school levels were less than 20 percent and 5 percent respectively for both Afar and Somali regional states, which represent the lowest rates in the country. Health facilities are not better either. Given the nominal government efforts in these areas, the “Millennium Development Goals” do not seem to have “goals” in the south. What economic growth are we talking about?

The Meles regime tells us that it is finalizing plans to transform the rural communities into a ‘digitized society’ within a few years! It would not do badly. But we have more urgent problems than that. As Bill Gates remarked, now our turn to say, “What good is a computer for someone who survives on one dollar per day, whose main concern is the next meal…?” The main problem with this government is that—if it gives any!—it decides on what people will have instead of what they actually need. Much to our chagrin, the PM is always quick to jump on western bandwagon than to listen to his people’s strong pulses. We must invest in ICT but, at the same time, we should identify those who are in need of it to streamline their jobs. At the moment, the south needs our attention for more schools and clinics than our fixation on “digital revolution,” which, in fact, is not unattainable if we have healthy and educated citizens everywhere in the country.

In conclusion, sustainable growth and development is not about money and big figures nor it is about opening the national economy to voracious multinational corporations that chase profit making investments without regard for our environment and our future. Rather it must take the people with it. We can grow sustainably only when we treat all peoples of Ethiopia in the same way and invest equitably to promote their material and intellectual aspirations. It is the lack of inclusive regimes that has been holding us under undue conflicts and wars which in turn consume our meager resources and priceless human capital that could have been channeled towards constructive social projects. We cannot have a socio-economic mechanism whereby one group is treated preferentially at the expense of the others who have been doomed to remain underdogs despite their plenty of resources. In the “North”, for example, the per capita regional budget transfer from the federal government amounts to 500 Eth.Birr while in the “South” it is only less than Birr 100(This reveals one of the innovative strategies of TPLF exploitation and looting). In the absence of “timely” corrections, people who feel deprived of their basic economic entitlement rights could be forced to adopt other alternatives to remove the circle that tramples on their economic freedom than to work with such a system. As it is said, it is never too late to change one’s views.Hence,even now, it is not too late for TPLF to turn its face southwards and put the energy and resource as it has been doing up in the north.

* The Writer can be reached at bishangary@yahoo dot com

-----------

The views expressed in this article do not necessarily represent the views of nazret.com. The views are solely that of the author

Become a contributor, click here to find out how to become a blogger on nazret.com, the most visited Ethiopian website