Yesterday Prime Minister Vanhanen announced new possible Finnish trade relations with China worth up to 2 billion USD in the coming years. Sounds like a big number, but let’s put it into perspective. It’s a well known fact that China has made a growing effort to increase all relations from trade to political relations with Africa. It is therefore not so surprising that Chinese trade with South Africa far exceeds trade with Finland for example or that trade with Angola is roughly the same. What is surprising however is that when you compare these numbers with the size of the economies of the above mentioned countries, one gets a sense how insignificant relations are between Finland and China or significant relations are for example to Angola. South Africa's GDP is roughly the same as Finland's and Angola's GDP is approximately 30 times smaller or exactly 3,4% of Finnish GDP.
Another number that makes sense is that Chinese trade alone far exceeds the official development assistance (ODA) with Africa. ODA, as it is commonly referred in the professional jargon, to the 40 least developed countries is 34 billion USD. Oil revenue alone to Angola is 50 billion USD. Total ODA from the OECD countries is approximately 105 billion per annum. This in hand just tells you how small portion, less than one third, of the aid actually go to the least developed countries.
Too many numbers? Finnish ODA just exceeds 1 billion USD, because of the favorable USD rate and China just agreed similar trade relations to Britain worth up to 13 billion USD. EU Development Assistance in total is about 60% of the total ODA, and was 60,5billion USD last year, again just little bit over what Angola gets from oil. Oh, and just that reality wouldn’t be forgotten, The Catholic University of Angola estimates that two thirds of Angolans still live with under 2USD per day.
So, what do all these numbers mean? First of course, that the official development aid is like drop in the Ocean, when we’re talking about resources available for development. Then secondly, it means that vast resources for social development would be available, but they’re too unequally distributed. Only the very small elites in Angola benefit from those 50 billion USD per year. Third the Chinese foreign trade numbers mean that they have become far more influential actor in Africa than any of us in the North realize. Fourth, that it is very obvious that the smart money says that the potential investment opportunities are somewhere else than in Finland. Chinese companies or government (it’s hard to differentiate sometimes) certainly don’t seem to think that Finland would be the “most competitive” or most investment friendly country in the World, though World Bank statistics or Prime Minister Vanhanen would so indicate.
Lie, greater lie and a statistic, they say, but behind these numbers there inevitably lies some truth.
Ei kommentteja:
Lähetä kommentti