₦airaland Forum

hamid6249:
Skin colour caused this humiliation ......whites hates us blacks with passion , some of them show it while some fake love us

The officer wasn't white , he was hispanic.

grandstar:
Quantity of spending is one thing, the quality of spending is another.

In Mexico, the teachers union is very strong and powerful and that's always an indication of rotten productivity and output. Unions exist primary to protect their jobs and enhance the welfare of their members.

So, if there's need to reform schools which may involve sacking bad teachers, they will stop you. The teachers pay isn't tied to the quality of education they dish out. All they are interested is protecting their jobs

I think the previous president did attempt some reforms but I don't think it went far enough.

Same thing happening in South Africa

Ugosample:
nope

Mexico has been stuck in the middle income trap for over three decades !!

grandstar:
Automation does not pose much of a threat to African countries as they are still quite poor. Wages are therefore still low and therefore no pressing need to automate in order to become competitive.

China can no longer rely on cheap labour as labour is no longer cheap. That is why it is turning automation. Mexico for instance is now the cheapest place to produce goods headed for the US.

China is now an upper middle income country and now needs brain power rather than brawn to grow to achieve rich world status.Thankfully, it seems to have a well educated population hence should scale this stage of development. Japan, South Korea, Taiwan and Singapore were able to become advanced nation's because of a well educated workforce.

Thailand on the other hand is stuck in the middle income trap. It's workforce is not well educated. It is even presently ruled by a military dictatorship.

Why despite one of highest spending on education of oecd countries , is Mexico still stuck in the middle income trap ?

grandstar:
Saying the growth was drive by oil only is inaccurate.

The oil price collapsed in 1981 brought about the worst recession ever in this country and it lasted till 1986 when Babangida introduced SAP.

The primary reason why the recession was so steep was that preceding governments refused to float the Naira for it's to find it's real value. Then the Naira was so strong that people would go to the UK to buy things there as it was much cheaper.

Upon the partial floating of the Naira in 1986 via a devaluation, the economy started to revive. Exports of commodities started a long awaited revival. It was the reforms that brought growth. There was no increase in oil price. If I'm even correct, the oil price collapsed to $10 that year from about $20 earlier and still. the economy grew.

The price later increased to $20 and hovered around that rate till 1999. In 2000, it rose to $30 but fell back to $20 and stayed there until 2003 when China's roar began the commodities supercycle.

High oil prices only started in 2003. And I'm sure if growth was too slow, they would have brought in reforms that would have quickened growth.

Not all growth again was because of a juicy oil price. The bank recapitalisaion exercise also helped lift the economy. Dangote credits that reform to him becoming what he is today.

Buhari with non-existent knowledge of economics introduced forex controls upon assumption of office which completely crippled the economy.

What's wrong with IMF policies? How do you expect to enjoy 24hour power when you don't want the DISCO's to charge enough to cover cost and make a profit? They won't pump in any money when they know they'll suffer losses. Banks wisely refuse to lend to them

The sell off of the NNPC will be the best thing to happen to the country. It would unleash NNPC's full potential on the economy. Look at what Petrobas has done on Brazil. A sale would even strengthen the Naira.

Stop bringing the Jonathan years into this. It's simply a lame excuse. The medicine PMB gave the country upon assumption of office wrecked the country.

Buhari scores an F9 in the way the economy has been managed under him. That's the teal chicken has come to roost

Though at tortoise speed of 3 percent every year

grandstar:
You're unknowingly promoting mediocrity with your statement.
A growth rate of 3% is a disgrace. From 1999-2013, Economy grew on the average of 6% yearly. Buhari's term has barely been 1% annually.

I'm no PDP fan. I'm actually apolitical.

Buhari maybe a man of impeccable character but his economics sucks. Economists are disappointed at many of his policies

It's just so unfortunate that morality has nothing to do with how far a country goes.

grandstar:
Cc:greatiyk4u

If the country needs rails or good roads before the country growth rate hits 8% or more, Buhari should step down now.

If 2.5% growth is okay for year 2019, then I am appalled.

Simply tinkering with the corporate tax rates to 15% and ending the multiple exchange rate policies will see growth rates hitting at least 6%.

Bangladesh has lamemtable infrastructure yet grows by 6% yearly. Pakistan with severe power cuts grew by 5% last year.

Heck even Ethiopia with the worst roads in all of Africa have a growth rate of 8 percent .

Ugosample:
That's a serious problem

Poverty is a serious concern in NIGERIA

Poverty is a very serious concern in sub Sahara Africa .
42 percent of people in the region live on less that $1.90 a day ,............and the number is still rising.

Meanwhile in North Africa , that number is less than 3 percent.

This is a very big problem and I still don't understand the reason.

bigsmoke2:
Arabs are very terrible people. Especially Saudi Even with knowledge of Islam they still treat people so terribly. If not for holy sites in their country it would be worst that Syria and Libya

If not for oyel

Ugosample:
Which magic do you want to perform?

.

MJBOLT:

i thought it was Kings College in Lagos

Naija bloggers are just mad

omohz:
something finally good coming out of Naija , see number 29, even though we move like snail, we'll surely reach there.

I swear to God !!!

I was so glad to see that.

grandstar:
Growth rate is too poor. That means real growth is only 0.5% as the population growth is 2.5%

Nigeria needs at least a 7% growth to make any impact on the citizenry.

I doubt we would even see 4 percent in this buharis regime.

grandstar:
Why so much self hate? Your skin has no bearing on whether you succeed or not.

In 1978,China was so backward that it was a laughing stock. When a Brazilian delegation visited the country in 1981, they did not find anything noteworthy to import. It was that bad.

Was it that the Chinese were inherently backward or stupid? No. It was because chairman Mao had ruined the country. I'm sure like you, many Chinese felt that they were worthless and a bunch of failures.

As at 1986, Chinese GDP was only half that of California. Due to rapid economic growth over the past 40 years, it's economy is 4 times the size of the Californian economy and it's now the 2nd largest economy in the world.

The problem African economies have has been their politics which are usually dominated by a strongman who refuses to step down and hangs on power

There are rich black countries like Barbados, Bahamas, Botswana and so on. It's not all negativity

Biko pls remove Botswana from that list.

Ugosample:
Africans are THE WORST!
Latin America has made progress over the last two decades (Mexico is a trillion dollar economy, Brazil is a trillion dollar economy, they manufacture their weapons and other key stuff themselves)

Arab countries are now more developed than they were 30 years back (Saudi, UAE, Qatar, Bahrain, Kuwait; etc) though they have social problems, they are still developing with good infrastructures


Can you say same about that cursed continent called Africa?

only a hand full is trying to move

The vast majority is decomposing.

Trillion dollars economies plagued by very high gini coefficients are of no use to the impoverished masses of the Americas.

.

Ugosample:
African countries are $hithole countries (most of them)

So they are not wrong to regard the countries as such, id they do.

Banning African leaders and elite from theur country may work

But will not

African leader will just build a small enclave for himself and his ilk on the continent, keeping the others out


Black man is very wicked

He does not want others to enjoy what he does

So if the Europeans keep them from enjoying there

They will just build a small enclave here

And the people will still be worse off.


uprooting the leaders is the only solution

Dude calm down , if u think African leaders are bad , what about Arab leaders , what about Latin American leaders.

grandstar:
The issue needs to be handled with tact. Religion in the North is an explosive issue and it's exploited by the political class.

The best step to take is to provide free feeding for school attendance. This works very well but one must make sure that they stay in school.

I'm not a fan of free and lamentable education. If it's 3 years of free qualitative education the State can provide, stick to that. 5year olds who attend good schools are able to read fluently. If it's only 3 or 4 years education and they can read and write fluently and can solve fractions, then very good. It's better than overstretching very scarce resources over 12 years and ending with semi literates who can barely string a statement without bullets firing

Hasn't something like that been done ?

I have heard reports that governors practically have time " bribe " children in the north to go to school .

Spoiler alert .....it didn't work.

Sharonose:
Nigeria is far better than Mexico...have been there and I hate it ..gosh !poverty ..

Is poverty in Mexico that bad ?

https://www.google.com/url?sa=i&source=web&cd=&ved=0ahUKEwi_1-6B3ZLhAhVwxYUKHdXSBckQzPwBCAM&url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.economist.com%2Fleaders%2F2019%2F03%2F16%2Fchina-may-soon-run-its-first-annual-current-account-deficit-in-decades&psig=AOvVaw02w1reFfApqP6l3RmyKVDD&ust=1553240262262052

China may soon run its first annual current-account deficit in decades
The implications will be profound



Mar 16th 2019
THAT CHINA sells more to the world than it buys from it can seem like an immutable feature of the economic landscape. Every year for a quarter of a century China has run a current-account surplus (roughly speaking, the sum of its trade balance and net income from foreign investments). This surplus has been blamed for various evils including the decline of Western manufacturing and the flooding of America’s bond market with the excess savings that fuelled the subprime housing bubble.

Yet the surplus may soon disappear. In 2019 China could well run its first annual current-account deficit since 1993. The shift from lender to borrower will create a knock-on effect, gradually forcing it to attract more foreign capital and liberalise its financial system. China’s government is only slowly waking up to this fact. America’s trade negotiators, meanwhile, seem not to have noticed it at all. Instead of focusing on urging China to free its financial system, they are more concerned that China keep the yuan from falling. The result of this myopia is a missed opportunity for both sides.

China’s decades of surpluses reflected the fact that for years it saved more than it invested. Thrifty households hoarded cash. The rise of great coastal manufacturing clusters meant exporters earned more revenues than even China could reinvest. But now that has begun to change. Consumers are splashing out on cars, smartphones and designer clothes. Chinese tourists are spending immense sums overseas (see article). As the population grows older the national savings rate will fall further, because more people in retirement will draw down their savings.

Whether or not China actually slips into deficit this year will be determined mostly by commodities prices. But the trend in saving and investment is clear: the country will soon need to adjust to a new reality in which deficits are the norm. That in turn means that China will need to attract net capital inflows—the mirror image of a current-account deficit. To some extent this is happening. China has eased quotas for foreigners buying bonds and shares directly, and made it simpler for them to invest in mainland securities via schemes run by the Hong Kong Stock Exchange. Pension funds and mutual funds all over the world are considering increasing their exposure to China.

But the reforms remain limited. Ordinary Chinese citizens face restrictions on how much money they can take out. If many foreign investors tried to pull their money out of China at once it is not clear that they would be able to do so, an uncertainty that in turn may make them nervous about putting large sums in. China is terrified of financial instability. A botched currency reform in 2015 caused widespread volatility. But the system the country is moving to, which treats locals and foreigners differently, promises to be leaky, corrupt and unstable.

Eventually, then, capital will need to flow freely in both directions across China’s borders. That is to be welcomed. People outside and inside China will benefit from being able to invest in more places. The need for freer capital flows will have the welcome side-effect of forcing China to reform its state-dominated financial system, not least so that it commands confidence among international investors. This in turn will mean that market forces play a bigger role in allocating capital in China.

You might expect America’s trade negotiators to welcome all of this, and urge China to free its financial system. Unfortunately they seem stuck in the past. Obsessed with the idea that China might depress its currency to boost exports, they are reportedly insisting it commit itself to a stable yuan. That is wrong-headed and self-defeating. Rather than fighting yesterday’s currency wars, America should urge China to prepare for the future.

grandstar:
Wow. Interesting.

I don't know how true that is.

Maybe our nairalanders in Kazakhstan can confirm.

grandstar:
I thought he was grooming his daughter for the job?

Anyway, it's the most prosperous of the Central Asian countries and the president has been a strong supporter of economic reforms. It scores around 60 on the Ease of Doing Business index.

I heard it's even more prosperous than Russia to the extent that Russians go there to do menial jobs.

uuzba:
You can only achieve that by manufacturing and exporting and doing without imported goods.
...goods like, pant, phone, toothpick, card reader machines, Dangote trucks, Chinese Trains.
Just look around. You're surrounded by imported goods.
If you need them, manufacture them. THEN, N1 = £1

It's just so funny that what many Nigerians don't know is that if we start becoming a manufacturing powerhouse like China , we will never want 1 naira to be 1 pound , we may even want our currency to be weaker than it is now .

grandstar:
That's the only option. The phrase closest to Brexit in the English language is "economic suicide". What were they thinking?

They were thinking ....." These eastern Europeans are stealing our jobs "

grandstar:
I was just being cheeky. You can see I am back in Nairaland. I miss you guys

Lool

grandstar:
Yoruba's dey lead globally. You know that Bini people are descendants of the Yoruba's and that probably explains.

I'm leaving Nairaland now and I'll be back tomorrow. I suspect Bini people will be after my head

Bini are not descendants of Yoruba but are the descendants of the Y.E.A.I ( yoruboid , edoid , akoko, igboid ) ethnic group that existed thousands of years ago.

Sharp girl

grandstar:
I'll be honest with you, I am yet to study it.

Anyway. there is a Chinese saying that,"Money covers a thousand imperfections". Because these countries are prosperous does not necessarily means that all government initiatives worked.

Whether South Korea's picking of winners was successful is not easily discernable because of the existence of the mighty chaebols, which are huge conglomerates such as Samsung and Hyundai.

Because each chaebol is involved in a wide range of activities and many divisions, losses from one can be covered up from the profits of another division.

Let's say Hyundai shipbuilding is making losses and Hyundai cars is profitable, they'll simply use the profits from the car division to cover up for that in shipbuding.

The Chaebols make little profits which indicates that many of their divisions are making either tiny profits or very huge losses.

Until the Chaebols begin to unbundle loss making divisions and focus on their core competence and profits, it will be a Herculean task to determine with sectors thrived with state guiding hand.

The most important thing about South Korea however is that their well educated workforce made the leap from third world to first world possible in a generation.

For Taiwan, it created the enabling environment for science to thrive. That tiny country produces 37,000 engineers a year. America despite being 15 times it's population only produces about 80,000.

What Taiwan seemed to have done is to create the environment for winners to thrive and backing them up.
I will still need to conduct a lot of research

Nice answer !!!!

Many Nigerians under estimate the power of education to propel a country to first world .

You hear many of them saying that of what use is spending a lot on education when there are no jobs.

grandstar:
Here we go again.

Why palm oil? Because we had comparative advantage in Palm oil 50 years ago does not mean we have it today!

Comparative advantage can be lost. Textiles and garments production flourish in third world countries because it's a labour intensive industry and since labour is cheap in poor controls, it's very ideal.

But as wages begin to rise, manufacturers begin to move out and seek cheaper climes. Japan, South Korea and Hong Kong were once big in textiles but no longer. They lost their comparative advantage in it.

Nigerian farmers seem to be turning their noses away from palm oil and focusing on their attention on other crops such as cashew, sesame seed, Shea butter etc.

It has been estimated that shea butter alone can yield up to $2b yearly for Nigeria.

Cultivating palm oil involves lots of deforestation. Indonesia has lost large acreages of land to oil palm plantations on Sumatra and on many other islands.

The State is poor at picking winners. The market should be left to decide and when it's makes that decision, the government should put it's weight behind it.

Excep they are Taiwan and South korea

RTSC:
Nigeria's palm oil production diminished when we discovered crude oil.

That was long before pdp came.

Try knowing your history before blaming pdp.

No , it dimished when we had the oil boom. Those are two different things

Ugosample:
I know Liverpool used to be a $hithole

But that was 100s of years ago

In the 21sr century, even Stinky India is making strides while we as black folks are still fvckin up.

There are certain things that should not even be in existence in the second decade of the 21st century, NO EXCUSES

In the 21st century, electricity and amenities should not even be what people use to campaign

you make excuses too much for the black folks
I don't

that's the difference between us both

There really are just some things that are unacceptable. Look at how 214 year old Haiti hasn't gotten simple basic things right.

IMAliyu:
Is it that they are poor because they are religious or is it because they are religious that they are poor?

They are religious because they are poor.Religion or the lack of it , does not determine whether one would be rich or poor.