‘Look Africa’ initiative |
All progress comes to a halt when delusional thinking becomes a national pastime. We refuse to accept results as they are obtained in black and white. We begin to hallucinate. We see not what is apparent but begin to look with intoxicating pleasure at what is non-existent.
We begin to indulge into wholesale deception. As a nation for the longest of time, we are all guilty of applying this logic upon our economic policies, initiatives and the resultant outcomes. Exports are one such critical area where falsity prevails.
Export figures have never crossed officially beyond USD 30.6 billion, while un-official figures during 2024 stood at USD 32.44 billion. The reasons for lack of focus could be several, but essentially it is also about lack of imagination of our exporting community.
Exporters have since the 1960s relied upon the US and the West as their export markets. In addition to this, in fairness, whatever subsidies the government gave, in terms of concessional financing has been abused to the hilt by exporters.
During Covid 19, large sums of disbursements were made for BMR (balancing, modernising and replacing) — where is its impact? Unseen. The numbers haven’t moved; in fact the needle is stuck. So where was the money deployed? Possibly, into the graveyard of overseas real estate.
In the last 3-4 decades, several developing countries developed policies that gravitated around the concept of a developing economy that was housed within the view of creating an export oriented economy.
The counties of North East Asia and South East Asia, of which some are clubbed together as Newly Industrialised Countries (NICS) adopted this economic strategy. They focused on developing exports which they had rightfully deduced would be an important feature for economic growth. The NICs spent a lot of years in research and development to understand the needs of the “global consumer”, they invested into developing services, products and industrial/capital goods that were largely meant to replace the production output of Europe and the USA. This was pursued with the intent to offer the same product,........