RECOVERY? EVERYTHING FOR THE EXPORT

In 1999 the Colombian economy culminates a very critical year for third consecutive time. The results of production and profits of the enterprises are worse than those of the previous years. The only sector that has recovered, although partially, is the exports. When one knows that the building licensing in Bogota was reduced in a 40 percent with respect to that of 1998, being that a terrible year, we understand how ill-shaped things are.

Of course that the plain people takes the worse part, with a rate of unemployment that surpassed the 20 percent and that has been taken advantage of to deteriorate the wages and the conditions of work of those who have a job. As demonstrated by an investigation made by the CGTD Union, the number of workers with low income - equal or inferior to the legal minimum wage - increased in 500.000 (five hundred thousand). Now there is less stable work, and more contracts of "services", that is less contracts with social benefits and a with health services that get more and more expensive day by day.

For the Government the "success" lies in the fact that this year's Gross National Product suffered a smaller reduction than in the previous year, "it was reduced only in a 3,5 percent" (although in fact it was reduced in nearly 5 percent). Therefore, as indicated by the Director of Fedesarrollo Juan Jose Echavarría, instead of arriving to a recovery, the crisis has touched bottom.

Does It mean that nothing has changed in the economic conjuncture? No, although the economic policy pressed successfully towards the reducing of the interest rates that fell in real terms (from 20% to 6 %) and lowered drastically in nominal terms (from more than 36 % to 16 %). The massive fight of the ones indebted to the UPAC led to a sentence of the Constitutional Court that ordered to modify the system of usury with the credits for house building and housing acquiring.

The recession, in a very higher degree that the economic policy, caused the annual inflation to be under the ten percent, for the first time, in spite of a fiscal deficit of the 6 percent and the riotous rise of the 41 percent in the prices of gasoline. The fiscal crisis presents us only as a perspective of solution the credit granted by the International Monetary Fund with the usual conditioners of adjustment.

The devaluation of the peso was ordered by the IMF and pressed by the exporting sector. The changes implemented until now have only manifested in a recovery of the exports and the legal exporting sector has demonstrated not to have a sufficient multiplying role as to lay out the recovery of the total assembly of the Colombian economy.

At Our Expense

However, the success of the recovery of exports and the aggravating of the economic crisis, have been interwoven phenomena. In order to try to understand why this happens, it’s necessary to know that although the United States has made a great deal of imports and registered a commercial deficit due to the strength of the country's currency and to the devaluation of those of the rest of the world. Simultaneously and for the same reasons it works like a suctorial economy of the resources of Asia, Russia and Latin America.

If in the United States the economy grew this year in a 5 percent, in good part it has been thanks to the financial crisis in Southeast Asia and Latin America and to the flight of capitals of our countries.

The economic policy of the Pastrana Government is fitted then within this international reality of the sacking of resources in benefit of the metropolis. Export means, in these conditions, more goods for the United States and in the case of Colombia more petroleum, mainly. It means, even more and specially, more foreign investments in Colombia that, taking advantage of the devaluation of the peso, obtain high profitable rates in export enterprises, mainly petroleum extraction and other resources.

Thus, although the increase of the international prices of petroleum have benefited the incomes of the state oil enterprise ECOPETROL and territorial entities that receive the royalties, the country has been punished, simultaneously, with the import of its own gasoline. Its internal price has been matched to the international prices, and with a price calculation formula which it harms ECOPETROL, in benefit of the transnational gasoline traders.

Therefore, if they export the image of the Government as benefactor of the interests of the transnational corporations, so that these press the United States to give greater military aid to Colombia, is more important than if Colombia exports merchandise for obtain currencies and finance the multiplication of the recovery.

To obtain more external resources, the Government sells to the outside the image of its great interest in the peace process. But in the interior of the country, the peace process doesn’t advance nor the Government makes proposals of economic, social and political reforms that allow it to really advance in this area. The peace process has also been treated then, like an export problem.

The international crisis of the globalization model

What the Pastrana Government does not want to know is what was expressed in the meeting of the World Trade Organization WTO in Seattle: the paradigm of the globalization that was fashionable in the two last decades is in crisis and it unmasks.

In Seattle the protests against this paradigm converged. Thousands of demonstrators, who represented millions: ecologists, workers unions, "Peasant Way", indigenous peoples. The chips of the marquetry have begun to be joined in a giant protest against the project of the transnational corporations: that with time can get to construct an alternative international project.

The Colombian Government and others of resembling nature become infuriated because the unions demand minimum international labor norms, that prevent the super-exploitation, and because the ecologists demand not to destroy nature with the pretext of "development". These Governments received more than a shove in Seattle.

In addition to the protest, Seattle demonstrated that the "free" commerce is not free at all. Europe keep giving high subsidies to the farming sector, while our agriculturists the end of the state support was imposed to them and the smallest national budget assignation for the sector in history will be imposed to them in 2,000 year. The meeting of the WTO failed and although is going to be a very long wait until the model of transnational corporation's globalization is defeated, Seattle was the beginning of its end.

Yuppies to the attack

Nevertheless the neoliberals that surround Pastrana, do not want to be aware of the changes and insist, blinded, in the policies from ten or more years ago. Its program is simple: keep cutting the income of the workers; to eliminate more social benefits; to close more public hospitals; to privatize the companies of electricity and telephony and whatever is still in the hands of the State; to give up more petroleum, more gas and coal and more of anything that can be given up. Their vision does not go far.

Their low human and technical quality was clearly shown in the way they have dealt with the situation of the historical "San Juan de Dios" Hospital, the main one of the country, that having subsisted by centuries is now threatened by the dogmas of the neoliberal ones.

Agricultural sector

To the governmental equipment, "the best agrarian policy is the devaluation". Indeed, the devaluation provides some protection to the national farming production, that allows it for the first time in the decade, to increase the cultivated area, in respect to the previous year. Nevertheless in 1999, 700 thousand hectares less than in 1990 were cultivated.

There is not a new vision of the farming fields; there is insistence on the worn away measurement of devaluating without making structural changes, a measure can have good effects in the short term, but that does not promise results in the long term. These so " modern " gentlemen, in fact are dinosauria that maintain an obsolete historical system, the large estate and the national subjugation, in the middle of the most pronounced stage of the globalization that they themselves announce.

They are no more than "general Reyes of end of century". As general Reyes from a 100 years ago, barter the nation in concessions and contracts like the one of gas. The Government tried to give natural gas to the American Company Enron and the latifundium-owners hope that the lands, which they have seized with violence, valorize with the investment projects that they manage to sell out.

The Investments and stock-market

In spite of their talented disposition of promoters of foreign investment, not even in this field the yuppies of the Government could display something new in ‘99. The Japanese decided to postpone, until there is peace, their participation in the project of privatization of the Meta River, which created an expectation that has caused great displacement of population and violence. The transnational oil companies continue demanding more and more advantages, they do not have not enough with which already this Government and a considerable set of recent ones have granted to and hopes in addition to see how can they defeat the fight of the U’wa.

The index of prices of the actions in stock-market of Bogota (IBB), that during international the stock-exchange crisis of 1998 dropped from close the 1,000 to the 700 points, seemed to recover in the first semester by the stimulus of the loss of the interest rates, and got up to 1,200 points. But soon, after the mini-coup d'état of Defense Minister Lloreda and the generals, fell again below the 900 points, faced with the pessimism towards the peace process and the low results in the industrial production and commerce.

At the end of the year, with all and a devaluation of the 27 percent, the IBB is just rounding the 1,000 points again, which in international terms, discounting the devaluation of the peso, means to be as at the bottom as in the worst days of ‘98.

Slow and immoral

Being that the shape of things it is necessary to know that the economic recovery will be slow and tremendously expensive for most of the Colombians. It will be a recovery sized to fit the transnational companies, the political class, the speculating landowners and the financial groups.

The immorality of the Colombian dominant class lies indeed in trying to maintain its obsolete model by means of the violence; the dirty war; the murder of the popular leaders; the disappearances; the displacement of hundreds of thousands of people who live (or lived) in the strategic areas for great projects on investment; and the destruction on nonrenewable natural resources.

With hypocrisy, its appearance as a democratic regime is exported like condition to maintain its domination and the foreign investment... Until when?