Political stability and economic development

By: Addis Ababa Othow

Why most of developing countries are unable to enjoy rapid growth? In Asia, rapid economic growth of newly industrial countries (Singapore, Taiwan, South Korea and Kong Hong), Malaysia and China has attracted the world. They had enjoyed more than ten percent average growth during 1980 and 1990s.

China has been enjoying rapid economic growth for last two decades. The Chinese Communist Party is in power since 1949 and China introduced economic reforms in 1987 under one party political system.

Many studies have identified various sources of rapid growth in those economies such as human capital accumulation, physical capital accumulation, technology improvement, foreign trade, foreign trade investment and attitudes of people. Even all those factors positively contributed to economic growth, all of them directly and indirectly depend on political stability which those economies had during their period of development.

A politically unstable environment usually means that the government is mis -using or mismanaging the country's resources: resources aren't being used to their full capacity, or in a manner whereby economic development could be maximized. In a situation where civil war is occurring, money and human resources can be taken away from normal jobs and processes which could be used to develop the economy and used to fight a war. It is also right that if a country's political environment is volatile, this will deter investors and foreign trade and economic development. Take Zimbabwe for example.

One of the problems that the government of south Sudan  has is the corruption.  The government uses the country's money for its own purposes, without a thought for the poor average person or the development of the country.

In fact GOSS  has improved living conditions for some southern Sudanese people in the last 4 years.  In meantime it has not effectively managed to solve  the price problem and inflation in Juba for example. I hope GOSS will exert itself to maximize  employment, provide education, increase medical facilities, decrease inflation , protect the rights of all, better maintenance of rules and laws. The government should make greater efforts to eliminate poverty in the south. Recognizing the fact that there are still a lot of south Sudanese living under the poverty line and asking for international aid.

Although GOSS does not hide the fact that there are still many serious problems in South Sudan such as security , better maintenance of rules and laws and  inflation, there should be more efforts to fight the corruption and improve banking and economic system.

With eye on self-determination some people have already expressed concern about the ability  of the SPLM as the  governing party to tackle all problems in south Sudan . people are asking themselves  if the political system in south has various tools to ensure that SPLM party will acts within its constitutional responsibilities.

We all agree  that political instability is negatively correlated with economic growth. So the only way to get out of this economic and political mess is to have government who works for people, having government supporting the public and private sector to provide services, goods and low price.

Politicalization of the economic growth, institutional framework for economic growth can be also facilitated by the social capability, social infrastructure, good governance and rules and regulations.

I do believe that the economies might  do well with unstable governments as long as the government still functions. For example the Netherlands and Belgium had abnormal changes in their governments within 6 years ago, but they maintained a good growth rate. Hope GOSS will do so.