Turkey
is only one of many
Third World countries surging ahead
By
Jonathan
Power
TFF Associate
since 1991
Comments to JonatPower@aol.com
September 6, 2005
LONDON - While
Europeans debate their economic sclerosis and the
Americans their growing deficits most of the rest of the
world is moving forward and upward, especially so if we
are talking about numbers of people not of
countries.
Every time I come to Turkey I have
to blink. Not that long ago the big cities were
overridden with shantytowns and poverty stalked every
village. Now, if not truly European as the Turks so
earnestly want, the country makes a good attempt at
emulating European standards- few shanty towns, fast
roads all over the place, handsome bridges, well dressed
children, a fast rising growth rate, a highly successful
manufacturing export sector, rapidly improving heath and
educational services and a remarkably obvious presence of
educated woman in positions of responsibility.
But Turkey, while an exception in
the Middle Eastern Muslim world in that it both lacks oil
and distributes the wealth it generates reasonably
fairly, is not atypical of much of the rest of the Third
World. Over the last three decades developing countries
have recorded more rapid average real income growth than
the developed, already industrialized, countries. During
the 1980s developed and developing countries grew at a
pace of 3.1% and 3.7% a year respectively. During the
1990s economic growth in the developed countries slowed
down to 2.4%, but in the developing countries it
accelerated to 4.8%. And during the first five years of
this decade the pace has picked up further: average real
income growth has been more than double that in the
developed world.
One only has to re-read the great
classics of the 1960s, John Gunther's "Inside Asia" and
Gunnar Myrdal's "Asian Drama", to be reminded that it
wasn't so long ago that the prevailing wisdom was that
this part of the world was a basket case, weighted down
by millennia of tradition- "The Hindu growth rate" and
"Confucian somnolence" were the catchwords of many
observers. Even today, despite the example of Turkey,
Malaysia, Pakistan and Indonesia, we often hear argued
the bizarre notion that Islamic culture is simply not
conducive to capitalist development.
Admittedly, most of this remarkable
surge has been concentrated in China, India and South
East Asia. But they account for two fifths of the world's
population, which is why I say don't count countries or
one falls into the trap of much UN reporting that sees
its statistics always skewed by its need to respect the
scores of small countries that make up the bulk of its
membership.
Even with that caveat, the fact is
the good news is spreading. After suffering what was
called "the lost decade" in the 1980s followed by an
indifferent decade in the 90s most of Latin America is
now doing rather well. Africa, whose images of starvation
can still overwhelm us, most recently in Niger and the
Sudan, is overall doing better than it has ever done.
Last year Africa averaged a growth rate of 4.5% which
means that many countries, not so long ago languishing in
the trough of despond, are now doing remarkably well,
with growth rates approaching or even exceeding
6%.
I wish I could show you the graph
that I have in front of me of developing country exports
to developed countries of "technology-intensive
manufactures", just published by the UN's Conference on
Trade and Development (Unctad). But if I describe it as a
line rising steadily since 1985 and becoming almost, if
not quite, vertical from 1997 onwards I don't think I'll
be reprimanded for misrepresentation.
This is one of the core reasons for
the remarkable growth of the developing countries. Not
textiles and not agriculture. It is humdrum manufactured
products, followed by electronics. Of course,
liberalising agriculture and controlling the Chinese
ability with textiles to out-compete other smaller and
poorer countries by sheer volume is important for the
likes of Africa and Central America, but is also once
again an example of a couple of items of bad news
crowding out the many examples of good news.
There is also one other important
reason for this success- it is the remarkable take off in
South-South trade, between the poorer countries
themselves. They are not just taking in each other's
dirty washing. These exports have become an important
part of their strategies for growth, as with Brazil's
large-scale sales of soya to China and Turkey's exports
of engineering products around the Middle
East.
Poverty, the scourge of centuries,
could be effectively abolished this century. Totalitarian
China may be going backwards on this, particularly in its
rural areas and among new urban migrants, despite its
tremendous growth. But democratic India and Turkey are
showing what economic growth should be all about. India,
even though millions are still unspeakably poor, now has
a better distribution of income than the United States.
And so does Turkey.
Copyright © 2005 By
JONATHAN POWER
I can be reached by
phone +44 7785 351172 and e-mail: JonatPower@aol.com
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