Teaching Comparative

Economic policy 6

The global economic and financial crisis offers an opportunity to look at policy making in various political systems. We can ask questions about how the policy making process works; about what ideas are most influential; about which people and groups vie for influence in making policies; and about who seem to be the winners and the losers in the process.

Then we can put our comparative hats on and make some

• generalizations about economic policy making
• comparisons of the policy making process and the policies and
• evaluations of the effectiveness of the policies

The sixth example comes from Nigeria.

Nigeria 2009: Between economic deficit and budget implementation

"Expectations are high, yet the world economy is in financial crisis while Nigerian economy is having its sad share of it. Nigeria, a mono-economy, oil producing nation, has not only suffered a major blow from its daily proceeds from crude oil exports in recent times, its economy may witness major deficit in 2009, a hard time ahead for Nigerians, you may say..."

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Govt Advised Against Borrowing

"Due to the negative implications of both domestic and external debt on the economy of any country, especially Nigeira, the Federal Government has been advised to stop any further taking of loans from developed countries.

"This advice was given yesterday by the country Director of Action Aid, Dr. Otive Igbuzor, at a one-day sensitisation workshop on 'Debt Audit and the National Development in the face of Poverty', at Denis Hotel, Abuja.

"According to Otive, debt naturally enslaves the borrowing growth, as the money is not usually used for economic growth, development or poverty reduction it was meant for due to corruption and mismanagment...

"Dr. Festus Iyayi of the Faculty of Management Sciences, University of Benin, who presented a paper titled: 'External Debt and Development In The Third World', said there is a negative relationship between economic growth and borrowing, adding that the more loan a country takes, the more problems the country encounters...

"On the way out of the present debt being owed developed countries by some third world countries, Otive suggestd that African countries should stop further re-payment of loans to foreigners as according to him, between 1970 and 2002, Africa received $450 billion and have repaid over $550 billion in principal and interest. But at the end of 2002, Africa's debt still stands at $255 billion..."

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Labels: economics, Nigeria, policy, politics

posted by Ken Wedding @ 6:25 AM