By Issa Aremu
Lagos - What is in a job, that a resignation from it would elicit such reactions across the global village? Mr. Michael Camdessus, the CEO of the International Monetary Fund (IMF), we are told, resigned half-way through his third five-year term in office for 'personal reasons.' This, for once, is refreshingly newsworthy. It must go down as one riddle of the millennium that a long standing disinterested international banker that spends time elevating the virtues of 'impersonal market forces' into some precepts of the Fund's catechism would fall for some 'personal forces'!
The United States has never concealed its criticism of the banker's less- than-thrift posturing for 'throwing money' at the distressed countries of Asia, (namely South Korea and Thailand) and for sponging the former East European communists with generous credits in place of stiffer conditionalities. Under his directorship, as much as $100 billion was mobilised for Asia to 'contain' the crisis. This sum dwarfs the peanut of $7 billion set for Africa's debt relief under the much publicized but selectively applied Highly Indebted Poorest Countries Initiative (HIPC).
Being the largest shareholder and the most influential member of the Fund, the US opposed this bailout generosity. IMF fell short of US expectation for not reminding the Asians that there is no free lunch, even for the most desperately hungry in Washington. In 1988, US majority senate leader, Trent Lott, only reportedly called for the resignation of Mr. Camdessus, over his 'free-lunch' attitude to Asia. Camdessus, he hysterically declared, is a 'socialist from France'!
In 1973, America successfully influenced the resignation of the Fund's then chief executive, Piere-Paul Schweitzer when it registered no confidence in his leadership. The resignation of Camdessus for whatever reasons, nonetheless exposes the myth of the invincibility of managers of global 'development' agencies in general and, importantly, underscores the limit of the powers of their staff. They often pose as policy originators when, in truth, they operate under strict 'conditionalities' that are no less vicious as those they are asked to impose on their victims.
Of special importance in Camdessus' exit is the searchlight it beams on the conditions of service of international civil servants. The question is when will the Fund live up to its gospel of reform and set the pace by reforming itself? IMF and the World Bank had, for instance, promoted considerable intellectual attack on the notion of permanent and protected jobs. In the process, they scape-goat trade unions as being responsible for 'rigidities' in the labour market. The two institutions actually invented the notion of 'labour market flexibility,' under which millions of workers worldwide can be hired and fired in the true spirit of 'impersonal market forces.' It is certainly a great discovery, that the same Fund's staff enjoy stable and rewarding jobs as exemplified by the long service of its out-going director.
Mr. Camdessus will be remembered as the Fund's first chief executive to visit Nigeria in recent times. But more than anybody else, Camdessus brought fresh life to the relationship between the country and the Fund with his May visit. Hitherto, Africa and, indeed, Nigeria only featured in international financial discourse, once some desperate balance of payment crises necessitated some feverish mission-visits conducted often by some under-aged, hard-nosed, middle- level Fund's missionaries.
His Abuja lectures will be remembered, not only for the seminal issues raised therein (good governance, democracy and the rule of law, equity and justice, economic restructuring, liberalisation and the debt crisis) but also the executive candour with which they were presented. The strong point of Camdessus' May visit lies in his pro-active orientation as distinct from the traditional reactive 'take it or leave it' recipe for which the Fund's country missionaries are notorious.
One of the controversial issues in the Camdessus' lecture is trade liberalization. Camdessuss called for a liberalized trade system to 'ensure that the private sector's decisions are not based on distorted prices.' IMF staff papers have derided infant industry arguments, making a case for liberalization ostensibly to usher in an era of competition, outward-looking manufacturing and export diversification. Alluring as this argument is, it is patently doctrinaire and, in the Nigerian context, cancerous. Camdessus described as 'historic scandal' the present Nigerian reality in which the real per capita income is now lower than it was three decades ago!
Camdessus needed not have been another Christopher Columbus rediscovering only one out of many historic scandals. One historic scandal lies in the fact that the century-long colonial rule with its regime of trade-liberalization not only killed emergent industry, it did not establish a single industry! In fact industries and their protection are historic responses to the historic scandal of wholesale trade liberalization under the colonial economy in which Nigeria was assigned the ignoble role of a producer of raw materials for European industries and consumer of manufactured goods from the same Europe. To return us to the era of discredited mercantilism is not to learn from the lesson of one historic scandal.
Sadly, the same historic scenario is being re-enacted. No thanks to former finance minister, Anthony Ani, who under the late dictator, General Sani Abacha surreptitiously 'bought-us-back' to colonialism by signing the 1997 World Trade Organisation (WTO) agreement without any consultation with the industry's operators! De-industrialization now stares us on the face as dumped textile goods, food and beverages, furniture from Europe and Asia, litter Nigerian markets thus undermining local production and accentuating the unemployment crisis. Nigeria's private sector's decisions are now based on worse 'distorted prices' and is caused by trade liberalization contrary to Camdessus' assumption that it is caused by protectionism. The issue is that every country protects its own infant and old industries. All Western economies rightly disregard IMF's policy advice and protect their industries especially in agriculture, textile and construction. Which explains why the cotton and textile industries in US fiercely opposed President Bill Clinton's Africa Bill which tokenly tries to allow African imports. It explains subsidized agriculture in Europe and high level of protection and non-tariff measures for industries in Japan and South Korea. Nigeria needs not prove an exception.
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