UNECA, The Economist Regard Growth in "Lion Cubs" Mozambique, Rwanda, Uganda with Guarded Optimism
August 28, 2003
by The Economist, "Finance and Economics" Column
The Economist notes that except for African states receiving oil windfalls, no African states grew faster in 2002 than Mozambique (12 percent), Rwanda (9.9 percent), and Uganda (6.2 percent). Moreover, all three economies have exhibited substantial growth and a degree of poverty reduction over the past ten years.
The column from The Economist attributes these strong performances to governments' adherence to the classic neoliberal prescriptions of well-defined property rights and the rule of law; balanced fiscal and monetary policies; and deregulation of business and finance.
Significantly, however, the column describes successes in Mozambique, Rwanda, and Uganda as "precarious" for three reasons:
* Foreign aid accounts for the majority of resources in all three governments' budgets;
* Much of the growth in all three countries in recent owes to recovery from wars; and
* While aggregate national growth figures look strong, these figures nevertheless do not reflect major disparities in growth among each country's different regions -- a dangerous trend in a part of the world where people's local tribal loyalties often supercede their national identities.
See http://www.economist.com/finance/displayStory.cfm?story_id=1989450 for more information.