Our Economic Salvation Genuine Long-Term Vision, Strategy And Courage The Independent (Banjul) OPINION August 13, 2001 Posted to the web August 14, 2001 Lamin Jabbi Barrister & Solicitor of the Supreme Court of the Gambia Banjul, the Gambia I can say with aplomb that today the world over, economic issues have conveniently replaced "politics" in terms of national or even international priorities. Now politics is about the quality and content of a nation's economy. The size of a country's army or ammunition is irrelevant. Constitutionally, "the State shall endeavor to create an economic environment that maximizes the state of economic growth and employment and secure the maximum welfare and prosperity for all persons in the Gambia." There is now recognition of what others call "economic democracy" where the state (i.e. the government) shall endeavor to keep inflation under control. History will record that the greatest mistake of the Gambian republic in the first 35 years of its existence was to make for less investment in human resource - investment in family planning, education, public health and nutrition than in extending the traditional " Mansa" type of leadership, where the leadership of any type is worshipped. We have neither qualitative growth nor qualitative development. Both our gross national product and gross national happiness are static. As often said, honesty is the best policy and development is the best contraceptive. Our development will not be possible if our present increase in numbers continues. Education, particularly that of the girl child is another excellent contraceptive. We keep on tackling a 35 year problems with five-year plans, staffed by three-year officials, working with one-year appropriations - fondly hoping that somehow the laws of economics will be suspended because we are Gambians. Do we have any long-term vision, courage and strategy for our economy? Can we adopt honesty as our best policy? Can a citizen survive honorably without paying bribes? Or is he/she bound to go bust if he/she is honest? What does honesty mean to the ordinary citizen? It means getting things done without having to pay money or doing things as required by the law without expecting payment or any reward other that the necessary pay/salary. Why people believe that nothing gets done if one resorts to honest means? Why bribe at every step? Well, maybe there are inefficient and insensitive systems at such points, which do not care to deliver. Here we are! We seem to be up in a vicious circle of policy mistakes and certain reactive quick measures, in the process continually being drawn towards an economic black hole. I recall the era of our Economic Recovery Programme (ERP) when so-called liberalisation, retrenchment etc were talked about. A lot of young people lost their jobs. Now I can see why all such reforms make no difference in our lives. Without a vision, a long-term strategy and courage any reform would result in a serious bankruptcy (in physical resources and ideas). Our economic policy makers, I think, so far at best acted to define policies which all improve only our foreign exchange reserves. Our policy failures have piled up through the decades with dishonesty, and by their own weight have crushed our ability to think afresh. Yes, we are now at a point when we need to reject all this refuse of the past with strength and courage. Mere rethorics and spirits cannot do much in the process of boosting economic development. Interestingly, policies or plans come and go with their architects. It is just like an empty barrel - you have different sounds by beating the top or the sides. This is what has been occurring to us - different drummers, beating the same barrel without seeing the inside of the same! This led us to a series of crises and the first is our over-confidence in our leadership in believing that whatever they do is right for the country. They seem never to question the basic processes and attitudes, which are taking the nation off track. Secondly, we have this crisis of confidence in ourselves with great deal of dishonesty. We are rather becoming increasingly over-dependent on economic and management recipes, products and services developed in other societies. We do not seem to have confidence in our intellect to serve our own people with solutions they require and can afford. Thirdly, there is the question of crisis of confidence of foreign investors. This is no doubt natural. As for example, even if the whole country is electrified, if we do not have confidence in each other, we will naturally put off the overseas investors. No country has risen with the base of society weak and the leadership unclear about the long-term. We could set things right but this requires intellectual honesty. Where an officer who closes his/her eyes while corruption is taking place in his department, be it by politicians or by his subordinates, is being intellectually dishonest. This is one of the tragedies of our administration. If the majority of the people of this tiny strip of land believe that an honest man cannot survive, does it not go against the instinct of self-preservation to stand on high moral grounds and watch oneself being helplessly swept away by a strong current? Unless money changed hands nothing seems to be "active and lively". Survival has become a nightmare for ordinary citizens. It is easy to preach from air-conditioned offices to helpless people on the street that they should not pay bribes. Things can improve only if people get together and demand (by reminding all) better governance and accountability. Corruption is the major reason why any act of liberalisation does not produce the desired result. It may not be talked about for others see it as a taboo, but if the global corruption rate is 7 percent and if the Gambian corruption rate is 13 percent, we have a 6 percent disadvantage on a product in the world market. It may be seen as a laughable phenomenon but others have suggested it long since. That is, if we agree that there is a global competitive corruption rate then we must also agree that we have our national competitive corruption rate. If our corruption rate in this country is higher than the global competitive corruption rate, our economy will not survive! Our ability to survive as a nation depends on the ability of our citizens to believe that honesty is the best policy for anything. We have certainly benefited from the few liberalisations on moves but economists would want us to believe that any such liberalisation is possible only when our mind is liberated to identify new frontiers of socio-economic advancement. This, they say, should only follow after a certain social purpose is accomplished in the "non-liberated" environment. If our policies were defined with a wider-angle lens and with a strategic perspective to develop a competitive nation in our sub-region by utilizing our human resources, we would have created a significant impact in the huts and villages of rural Gambia. We may in fact create exports with pride! Even if the government has to embark upon the process of equitable distribution of our wealth (if any) it has to be done in line with the spirit of wealth creation. Continuous failure in meeting the fundamental objectives has certainly given rise to social tensions - increasing gap between the different economic strata has been superficially addressed with different populist policies. A sincere economist at our Department of State for Finance would agree with me that non-productive government expenditures along with administrative inefficiencies have only increased and leakage of uncoordinated initiative are resulting in mounting fiscal deficit. Focus should now be on creating the necessary social ambience and environment for distributing wealth creation as opposed to sharing of wealth. Any promise to reduce fiscal deficit will only be a perpetual fallacy which would create either hyper - inflation or super-stagnation paving the path to our bankruptcy. We may even create or print a two hundred Dalasis note but that is not the solution! Yes with all these in mind, we need to develop a vision of political system, which will be in the best interest of The Gambia. Such a vision has to come from within for we also have our variables, which cannot be replicated. For any meaningful economic development (Vision 2020), we need a high level of integrity, work ethics and honesty in different segments of the social structure. Many of our businessmen and women believe that business means how to generate profit by beating the system under-delivering to the environment while "sucking" the most out of it. We need to be more innovative and strategic in revitalising the economy. One needs not become an economist to know that. To realise the economic goals of our constitution, we can learn from even the tiny island nation of Mauritius. Its development has "real" democracy as its trademark. We can only succeed with long-term vision, strategy and courage. _________________________________________________________________ Get your FREE download of MSN Explorer at http://explorer.msn.com/intl.asp ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- To unsubscribe/subscribe or view archives of postings, go to the Gambia-L Web interface at: http://maelstrom.stjohns.edu/archives/gambia-l.html You may also send subscription requests to [log in to unmask] if you have problems accessing the web interface and remember to write your full name and e-mail address. ----------------------------------------------------------------------------