Pa Modou,

Am i surprised that you will continue - as ever - to muddle issues time and 
again??!! In your chimerical attempt to throw a blow at my assertion that i 
have only expressed disquietude and or scepticism on the overall impact of 
cooperative economics to ameliorate the legion of Gambian poor and 
unemployed, you commented:

<< With all due respect Hamjatta, the above you claim to be a disclaimer is
infact not a disclaimer. You CANNOT disclaim three powerful indictments of
PDOIS's economic policy from THREE DIFFERENT POSTS with the above disclaimer
without withdrawing the former three. Your disclaimer above is in DIRECT
CONFLICT with your earlier posts and seem to another view that DOES NOT
CATEGORICALLY STATE which of the two applies to PDOIS's economic policy. The
onus is on you to either withdraw the former and stick to the latter or vise
versa. This, I guess is Buharry's contention and I stand to be corrected. >>

What the heck are you trying to say here? You see the problem with you ... 
you obfuscate stuff that have always been straightened out with mumbo jumbo 
that leaves folks tearing at their hair as to what you are on about. I'm sure 
you must have read my original essay on PDOIS' economic programme, where i 
commented, amongst others, that:

"Needless to say that such weasel- words as "cooperatives" are nothing but 
State contrived collectivisation at the expense individual enterprise and 
initiatives. Don't get me wrong. Free market liberals might be reluctant to 
use the weasel-word "cooperatives" but they see nothing wrong with voluntary 
and spontaneous civil cooperation or association between individuals in a 
market place or social entity. Liberals only object when the association or 
cooperation is State/gov't contrived as opposed to being a spontaneous and 
voluntary civil association between individuals."

From the very outset, i contrasted between State contrived 
cooperatives/collectivisation and spontaneous civil cooperation/association 
between individuals in an given entity - be they political, economic or 
social. And expressed a preference for the latter for obvious reasons. 
Suffice to say that this is what my point has always been vi-a-vis 
cooperative economics. Furthermore, given the diseconomies of scale 
associated with the PDOIS proposal, i argued that invariably we are going to 
end up with State contrived cooperatives as opposed to free market ones - if 
PDOIS' policy thrust is to make sense. What is so difficult about 
understanding this simple point? Where is the passage where i categorically 
condemned cooperatives? This misrepresentation of my views is getting out of 
hand. For the purposes clarity, i will reproduce my original essay on PDOIS' 
Economic Programme. Re-read it and show me where i've been inconsistent with 
i have been writing of late.

More to the point of your lack of understanding of the issues, or that you 
are not simply paying attention to the issues being raised, you wrote:

<< Hamjatta, I find it difficult to see the relevance in your reference to
Hayek's "The Road to Serfdom" to the current debate. >>

This is a clear manifestation - if any were needed - that you are not 
listening/reading carefully what is being said/written here. Let Buharry 
himself explain the relevance of the Hayek reference:

<< Which views have been repudiated by vast swathes of evidence? Socialism? 
Co-operatives? 

(a) Who carried out the rational disinterested study you talked about?
(b) Was it you? >>

To cut through what would have amounted to another endless debate on 
ideology, and bore people to death with theory-laden postings, i suggested 
the brother to read Hayek's "The Road to Serfdom", which is the classical 
liberal repudiation of socialism. If he disagrees with the Hayek position 
then we can take it up some other time.

I can only hope you start reading properly people's views and stop muddling 
stuff you seem on the whole ignorant about.

Hamjatta Kanteh

*******************************************************

Halifa, 

The way i see it, the central plank in PDOIS' Economic Programme is an urgent 
sense of renewal. It is a renewal of the type you have never seen wholly 
implemented in the Gambia before - even if in practice, it rhymes with some 
key elements of the PPP's economic edifice or strategy, especially as it 
relates to agriculture. I hasten to add that the PPP i speak of is the PPP in 
its formative and idealist years, especially in the early days of its 
existence when it was quite rightly labelled as 'mildly socialist'. The 
rhyming is more of a tacit structural and consequential resonance than, say, 
approach and outlook or tactical and philosophical emphasis. Perhaps, i ought 
to add further that the rhyming is more of an unwitting semblance than 
wittingly piggy-banking from the old and repudiated agricultural economics of 
the 'mildly socialist' PPP. It is worth a precious moment's pause to explain 
this supposition. The point here is not so much the similarities - in both 
design and intent - between the 'mildly socialist' PPP's old and repudiated 
agricultural economics and the central plank of the PDOIS' Economic 
Programme. Far from it. The point, though, is that by its prognosis and 
diagnosis and placing so much emphasis on an 'informal' farming-led 
resuscitation of the dilapidated Gambian economy, the PDOIS Economic 
Programme would fall in the same consequential and structural trap that 
eventually befell the PPP. How do we know this? When the PPP completely took 
over the reins of the country, they inherited more or less a very rusticated 
economy; some 85-90% of the Gambian economy was rural and the population 
dispersal pretty much matched this. To the extent that this is correct, the 
PPP naturally embarked upon something we might as well call rural economics 
in order to effectively respond to this reality. The result of this rural 
economics was to collectivise through "cooperative" societies - then very 
much in vogue and not yet repudiated - with government as a default 
inter-market for all agricultural yields. Thus the emergence of such publicly 
financed bogey-corporations and marketing outlets like GPMB, Gambia 
Cooperative Union, etc., etc. 

We all know the fateful histories of these bogey-corporations. However, 
contrary to popular myth, GPMB and Cooperative didn't fail simply because of 
endemic corruption. Admittedly, endemic corruption was what eventually break 
the camel's back in these bogey-corporations. The problem lied mainly in how 
they were structured and this primarily was telling in their ultimate 
consequences. The much-highlighted endemic corruption was as a result of 
these very structures and the pork-barrel politics that sustained the 
corruption and corrupt officials. And understandably so. If corporations are 
structured in such an economically inefficient way - as GPMB et al were - 
corruption is inevitable. Worse, when the structures assume monopolist traits 
and form a symbiotic relationship with the Mercantilist State, the choice of 
producers vis-à-vis the marketing of their produce is drastically limited - 
especially if it is a politically sanctioned monopoly. However, the biggest 
indictment against such public corporation bogeys like GPMB is how they 
crowd-out much needed investments that agriculture and these corporations 
need very badly, especially when the gov't has other priorities or as 
circumstances keep changing. The result is subsidised inefficient, corrupt 
and unprofitable public corporations feeding from the troughs of never-ending 
taxpayer led rescue packages. Until, of course, the gov't - largely because 
of its skyrocketing external debt - is literally forced to stop the subsidies 
and privatise. Never has solved the problem; because in any event, all these 
privatisations are ill-thought out and never factor the structural and 
consequential problems that have always dogged politically sanctioned 
corporations. To be sure, PDOIS' Economic Programme doesn't resemble an exact 
replica of this caricature. However, as i pointed out earlier, the point is 
how the PDOIS programme unwittingly tinkers with the very structures that the 
PPP initiated some three decades ago and - despite the altruism and 
dedication we can always expect from a PDOIS led gov't - how as an economic 
consequence, the PDOIS programme is also prone to a similar economic fate as 
the PPP. Let us closely examine the evidence before us. This is how you, 
Halifa Sallah, described the synopsis of the PDOIS' Economic Programme: 

"Today, the country has no public sector or private sector led growth. Only 
11% of the work forces are employed by government, parastatals and private 
sector. This is why we say that we need a productive public sector to 
generate income rather than rely entirely on taxation. We maintain that the 
private sector should be productive according its capacity. We argue that 
since 57% of the work force rely on agriculture the informal sector holds the 
key to the national economy. In our view, if a company can rely on 1000 acres 
of land to make millions in producing fruits vegetables we can organise a 
cooperative system where those engaged in horticulture can be provided with 
bore holes to produce and share their income as well as to contribute to the 
provision of services to their villages. We therefore stand for the building 
of co-operatives to enhance personal income and promote community 
development. This is one way of developing the informal sector." Emphasis 
mine.

Needless to say that such weasel- words as "cooperatives" are nothing but 
State contrived collectivisation at the expense individual enterprise and 
initiatives. Don't get me wrong. Free market liberals might be reluctant to 
use the weasel-word "cooperatives" but they see nothing wrong with voluntary 
and spontaneous civil cooperation or association between individuals in a 
market place or social entity. Liberals only object when the association or 
cooperation is State/gov't contrived as opposed to being a spontaneous and 
voluntary civil association between individuals. Let's now closely examine 
the above passage i just quoted from you. If this passage is not an exact 
replica of what the PPP had in place before the privatisation zealotry of the 
late1980s, then by God its wording is eerily close. Let me first make an 
ethical point and all good things shall follow. Good, avuncular or benevolent 
intentions by themselves alone don't make good business entities or lift the 
poor out of poverty. If the normative and economic dispositions of an entity 
do not square with its structural and consequential dispositions, no amount 
of avuncular benevolence can save the day. This ethical point is precisely 
what will eventually handicap a PDOIS led gov't as it did the PPP and most 
certainly the meeting point of the two very different political parties with 
two totally different agendas.

 Another fundamental flaw of the PDOIS Economic Programme is one of 
supposition. Because the Gambia's current provincial or rural populace is 
larger than that of its urban one and because agriculture still employs far 
more than any other sector of the Gambian economy, PDOIS supposes that in 
lieu of this, its economic programme should be primordially be representative 
of this. In short, PDOIS' Economic Programme was formulated as if the Gambia 
is ruralising or the rural populace is growing or static. The reality, 
however, is that the Gambia has a rural populace that is increasingly 
dwindling and urbanising at a very fast rate. Maybe as a transitionary phase, 
making rural economics the centrepiece of your economic programme is mooted. 
Yet, as a long-term strategy, there is no doubt that it will inevitably head 
for the rocks. To make the point clearer, let us examine how the Gambia's 
demographic disposition has been developing. According to the UN's World 
Development Indicators 2000, the Gambia's demographic disposition 
from1980-1998 looked like this:

 Urban Population: 20% in 1980 and increased to 31% in 1998 

Rural Population: 80% in 1980 and declined to 69% in 1998

The evidence exhibited above shows a country that is exponentially 
urbanising. That is not the end of the matter. In a recent conversation with 
a development economist, this gentleman told me that by his estimation - and 
indeed that of most of his colleagues - more than half of sub Saharan 
Africa's population would by 2015 be urbanised. This is a very conservative 
estimation; it could well turn out to be more than that. My hunch is that 
given the exponential rate of the urbanisation, it would not be far-fetched 
to suggest something like 65% of the population being urbanised by 2020. The 
estimation is well within reason. Herein, the evidence is that the Gambia is 
on the threshold of urbanisation and not ruralisation - as PDOIS' Economic 
Programme tacitly seemed to suppose and responding to. Since PDOIS' Economic 
Programme has not factored this development, it is understandable why the 
central plank of its economic policy is not reflective of these changes. 
Rather, it chose to centrally focus on what couldn't possibly - in the long 
run - be the main engine of the Gambian economy: rural economics. Economic 
orthodoxy suggests that the logical concomitant of urbanisation is 
industrialisation and commercialisation on a scale befitting a nation on the 
threshold of urbanisation. What does PDOIS' Economic Programme has to say 
about industrial and commercial policy? I'm all ears. Certainly, it would be 
very fair to surmise here that industrialisation and commercialisation - the 
key to resuscitating an increasingly urbanised country - remain low-key, if 
not totally mute, in the top priorities of the PDOIS' Economic Programme. If 
all PDOIS can come up with to manage an economy - that has an increasingly 
urbanised population - is to believe in "cooperatives to enhance personal 
income and promote community development", PDOIS might as well believe in 
squaring round holes. 

In my opinion, agriculture in the Gambia is not becoming a less attractive 
vocation because farmers are not producing enough. Indeed, the evidence is 
that agricultural productivity has been registering some useful gains - even 
if we are obliged to call it modest gains. That productivity, i hasten to 
add, doesn't corrode the fact that with the right environment and motivation, 
productivity would definitely be more than what it currently is. And whatever 
it takes to increase productivity, we should strive to that end. No, the 
crucial problem here is not lack of productivity. The problem is, however, 
one of chronic structural and marketing impediments that stymie the 
potentials of farmers to earn more to expand their productive bases. The 
first thing a liberal gov't ought to do herein is to adopt a multi-pronged 
approach to the deal with the agricultural problem. The first of such would 
be a major assessment of the impediments that shackle not only the 
marketability of the country's agricultural yields but what structures ought 
to be in place in order to plan ultimately the liberalisation of marketing 
the country's agricultural yields. This assessment would be gov't, farmers 
and interested private investor led. Whilst this assessment is in place or 
taking its course, the liberal gov't ought to, as an interim measure, take 
over direct responsibility of the marketing of agricultural yields with the 
view that as the agricultural environment ripens for market liberalisation, 
the gov't will totally relinquish such a role and take more or less backstage 
role in agricultural marketing. There is absolutely no need to create another 
publicly financed Bogey Corporation like GPMB or Cooperative Union to make 
this transition work. Because of its temporary nature, a Competition 
Commission can simply, as an interim measure, assume full responsibility for 
such a task. When the time is ripe to liberalise the marketing of 
agricultural yields, the Competition Commission can be given a new lease on 
life by being mandated with the task of regulating the free market that 
assume its former role. Under these arrangements, the Competition Commission 
would be decoupled completely from the gov't and would eventually assume the 
role of an independent regulator of business; with the clout of an 
heavy-weight public body ready to impartially take on any entity that 
undermines competitive capitalism. The Competition Commission would be 
empowered with anti-trust laws to ensure that no one corporation or 
individual investor can willfully or deliberately frustrate the 'spontaneous 
order' of the free market. 

Finally, and in lieu of the aforesaid, the State's or gov't's gradual retreat 
from the direct marketing of agricultural produce would definitely mean 
delineating a new role for it. Liberalisation doesn't mean the State or gov't 
is left impotent with nothing to do. Gov't's role would primarily be an 
informed, cautious and empirically determined subsidisation of agricultural 
inputs and infrastructures; and facilitating a conducive environment for 
agriculture to create a middle income rural economy. Most importantly, gov't 
would ensure that the Rule of Law is respected by all parties and the lines 
between the private and public sphere in agriculture are clearly demarcated. 
Where it would not fatally damage free trade and competition, the gov't can 
invest in rural structures that are crucial for the sustenance of modern 
agriculture. Hereupon, gov't shall ultimately retain primacy in all policy 
areas associated with agriculture - even if it entails consulting all 
participants in agriculture. In the very end, the new powers conferred on the 
State/gov't would be limited to the extent to which it can be an efficient 
enabler and facilitator in agriculture without becoming directly involved 
with its daily nitty-gritties or raking its grubby hands in the marketing of 
agricultural produce. This, in my humble opinion, is how a liberal gov't can 
help Gambian farmers become middle income earners and make rural life 
attractive again to dissuade the rural-urban migration. 

 I hope you had a successful party convention/conference. Looking forward to 
hearing from you.

All the best,
 

Hamjatta Kanteh

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