Dear netters and friends;
Over the past few weeks, I have been thinking what will be the best way to
influence the economic development of our continent and our region to be
specific.
My comments and suggestions are going to be generic rather than addressing
any one specific political economy model. I will concentrate on values and
where we should focus our attention, regardless of who is in power in the
region or what type of political system is in place. I appreciate this may
not interest those who are actively discussing the current personalities or
systems of administration. I have decided from my part to give direction,
focus on accountability and providing some indicators towards those specific
directions I am hereby suggesting.
At the outset I would like to begin by defining what I mean Broad Based
Sustainable Development (BBSD) and why and how I think it can be operational
in the Horn regardless of who is in the present or future political apparatus
of the region.
This is a vision for the 21st Century and would like to learn from your
perspectives as well.
By BBSD, I mean an socio-political- economic environment that stives towards
a healthy growing economy tht constantly transforms itself tomaintain and
enhance the standard of living of its citizens. The benefits of such
economic grwouth will be equitably shared that means women, minorities,
immigrants, refugees, and the poor and the disabled get a fair deal from the
economic growth at all stages. That the economy allows respect for human
rights, good governance, a healthy civil society of non governmental
organizations, and an increasingly democratic society. The last and most
important component will be that sustainability will have an economic process
of growth that does not allow us to destroy the our percious environment, iel
not foul the air, poison the wateer, pollute the soils, mine our resource
base or destroy our places of natural beauty so that our descendants can
enjoy the same or better and higher standard of living.
How can we measure wheter we are moving towards BBSD in a stage by stage
basis in the current climate of system that lacks accountablity. I will
suggest the following indicators, to hold our leadership who ever or what
ever their policy is:
1. Indicators for a healty economy?
1.1 Is there a structural transformation and effective governance?
Are resources being moved from lower to higher productivity, Is there
competence, accountability, rule of law, and accessibility of information?
1.2 Is there an improving GNP, Capital, ballance of payments
1.3 Is there improving Per Capita Income Growth; that is real per capita
income, nominal income, improvements in fixed exchange rates, floating
exchange rates, and non traded goods that is goods and services that are not
traded internationally?
1.4 What about improvements in purchasing power parity that is the
conversion factor to translate other countries income in to one international
currency ie. the US dollar of comparable value.
2. Improving employment
2.1 Is there improvement in the level of underemployment and efficiency of
labor that is the production of goods and services in such a way as to
minimize the use of resources.
3. Improvement towards a relatively stable prices:
3.1 A healthy economy has relatively stable prices or low levels of
inflation. Is the region making appropriate progress towards containing
inflation, and improving investiment?
3.2 Is there any way of measuring consulmer price index, whole sale price
index, and the GDP deflator that is the measure of changes in the prices of
all good produced in the economy and purchased by consumers, producers,
government and foreigners?
4. External equilibrium? That is sustainable balance of payments. This can
be measured by current account, capital account, and the over all account.
Is the region able to sustain a currrent account ballance as a percentage
share of GDP in measuring its success at ballancing its dealings with the
rest of the world?
5. Strucural transformations:- Is the economy transformed enough in such a
way that it is able tosustain a higher standard of living for the population
now and in the future?
5.1 Does the transformation have a great increase in agricultural
productivity and a shift from an agricultural based economy to an economy
based on industry and services, f
5.2 Is the economy moving from being characterized by uneducated and low
productivity workers to one with educated and high-productivity workers
5.3 Is the economy moving from a reliance on human labor to greater use of
machines, from an economy with relatively few crops and products to a
diversified econmy with many different crops and products, from a relatively
closed economy with few exports and imports to an open economy with large
share of imports and exports in the GDP
5.4 Is there a move from reliance of prmary goods for export like coffee to
increasing share of manufactured goods and services in exports, and from an
economy characterized by low savings and investment rates to one with high
saving and investment rates and increasing urbanization.
5.5 Does the economy have access to a time series data on labor force
diversity
6. Distributing the benefits of growth:- How well are the benefits of
economic growth distributed among the population?
6.1 Are there improvements in life expectancy, mortality and morbidity
rates, specifically in infant and under five morbidity and mortality?
6.2 Improvement in absolute poverty line that is measure of the minimum
income necessary to meet basic human needs.
7. Increasing Freedom, effective governance and democracy:-
7.1 Is the population's basic human needs met, ie. food, clothing, shelter,
basic health care and education?
7.2 Effective governance as defined the World Bank includes:
technical and managerial competence in public administration, is there
any?
accountability of public officials for their actions
predicability and the rule of law
adequate and accessible information systems.
7.3 Democracy: The last two dimensions that is accountability and the rule
of law are closely related to issues of democracy and freedom. Are these
available?
7.4 Effective rule of law:- These means the following:
Are there a set of rules known in advance?
Are these rules actually applied?
Are there mechanisms for a means of ensuring that the rules are
enforced?
Is there an independent judicial system able to make binding decisions
about how rules are to be interpreted?
Are there established and predicable proceducres for changing rules
7.5 Protecting the environment:- The World Bank which gave $2.5 billion to
Ethiopia recently estimates that world output could increase by a factor of
three by the year 2030. Unless ways are found to break the link between
economic growth and pollution, the World Bank argues tens of millions of
people could get sick or die each year from industrial pollution. Is there
an environmentally sustainable development tht meets present needs without
threatening the future generations' ability to do the same, or are there
sustainable yeilds achieved tht is is the depletion rate of the resources
does not exceed it replacement rate.
I will stop for now here and continue some of the Data sources that are
required to enable us to measure these seven indicators over time?
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