good question..abdi.ismail wrote:That's all good but, where does the material and expertise come from in your analogy? Where does the copper pipes for heating come from? The material to build underground sewage systems and lead the waste to a safe and clean plant for treatment? Where does the tar and gravel for roads and highways come from? Or the machines that break the stones to make the gravel? Who builds the steel factories to make the railroads? The currency is the easy promote among people within a country, but how do you make sure it's accepted outside the country in the wider world?
the answer is exchange controls.
We have no controls, dahabshiil and co do as they please and throw the government some crumbs, the shilling is useless because it has no reserves and the country in effect is dollar economy.
Somaliland has twice as much hard currency flowing into the country as eritrea, a couple of years back it was 4 times as much hard currency.
The eritreans had exchange controls from day one, you bring dollars, euros into the country, it has to be exchanged into nakfa, you cannot use dollars.
Dollars are provided to the importers by the government.
Its sounds dictatorial and inefficient, but guess what???
This is exactly what South Korea dis between 1962 to 1998, Japan had restrictions but they found a sneaky way to do the same thing.
Sweden had it during its industrilization, Finland was an extreme example and their controls where much stricter than Eritreans today or south koreas.
Austria did it in the 50's and 60s',.
Eritrea with less than 1/3 of our supply of dollars was able to buy all this machinery, build its own roads, and railways, entire city blocks,
and even afford Mig-29 and Su-27s costing $15 million dollars each while we allow dahabshiil, and other xawalad to control the currency and the qaad importers give our dollars to
ethiopian qad farmers.
. Except instead of Confucian classics they should study Finance and management.