Market-imposed hunger adds to Timor misery

[bemildred]

The usual "free market" results ...

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Reports from districts in East Timor continue to filter in: 10,000 people are staving in Cova Lima; 10,000 households are going hungry in Suai; and Los Palos, Baucau, and Manufahi districts are all reporting a food crisis.

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Since the independence referendum of 1999, an estimated US$3 billion in aid money has been swirling around board rooms, expensive foreign restaurants in Dili, and the US-dollar bank accounts of international consultants, rarely making the desperately needed trip beyond the city limits of the national capital. In one government department, a single international consultant earns in one month the same as his 20 Timorese colleagues earn together in an entire year. Another consultant charged the United Nations Development Program $8,000 for his first-class air ticket from his island tax haven. These stories add up. A recent European Commission evaluation of the World Bank-managed Trust Fund for East Timor noted that one-third of the allocated funds were eaten up in consultants' fees, to say nothing of overheads and tied procurements. But the problem is far deeper than the financial waste of the international aid industry.

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Last year, a group of rice farmers in Bobonaro district spoke about how they were faring in this brave new globalized world. They lamented that imported rice from Thailand and Vietnam - now representing as much as 55% of domestic consumption - undercuts anything they can produce. While the former Indonesian occupiers invested heavily in infrastructure, subsidized basic commodities and farm inputs, and provided a guaranteed floor price for farmers, the new occupiers have scrapped all of that. These days, farmers visit their World Bank-designed and privatized Agricultural Support Center to purchase farm inputs at prices so high it pushes their production costs above the selling price of rice.

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Meanwhile, the economy is steadily contracting and unemployment is skyrocketing, with 15,000 people entering the workforce each year. Even the International Monetary Fund (IMF) conceded at the last donors' meeting that these pressures are "reinforcing widespread poverty and serious underemployment". The deepening crisis of Asia's poorest country should be apparent to all. Indeed, donors have been wondering why Timorese farmers and workers aren't blossoming into productive micro-capitalists, just as the textbooks tell them.

Asia Times

[gottaB]

1. Donors?

Goodfellas.

Idiots.

I don't know. There's got to be a better euphemism.

[bemildred]

2. Political hacks? Charity whores? Crooks?

Remember the United Way chairman that paid himself $400K/annum?

[gottaB]

3. Uh huh. I'd be interested to follow the money.

I think the corruption might be orchestrated. Who are the greedheads behind the greedheads? Some lowly feed and grain salesman? I don't know.

[bemildred]

4. One thinks of Howard in Oz first,

but the Timor Leste gov't is hanging tough with him
last I heard over the hydrocarbon rights, so I dunno.
It is true that Howard has been stalling Timor on an
agreement, and that is part of the reason the country
remains poor.

It sounds like the usual IMF/WTO/WB bend over and take
it with no lubricant deal for 2nd and 3rd world countries.

It would be interesting to see the figures on external
debt and what has been happening there. I do know the
the Indonesians are still pissed about being thrown out.

The new government may be naive or corrupt or too weak to
do much. Between Indonesia and Oz the have two big hostile
neighbors, so I don't expect they have a lot of leverage
in international dealings.