opmerc,opmerc wrote: ↑25 Dec 2019, 22:22The reason someone gets detained is not just when they are accused of something violent. Someone being a flight risk for example, like he is, is also grounds to be detained. "He's not going anywhere, honest!!" is often not an adequate legal defense. His wealth also allows him adequate legal representation while detained so all his rights and due process are maintained. Beyond that, he shouldn't expect any special treatment or sympathy no matter what his other attributes are. If he's innocent, he can seek financial redress afterwards from the government and then continue where he left off.
For all the commitments he has shown over many years as a pioneer diaspora private business entrepreneur in the country with many acclaimed accomplishments, he should have been allowed a bail is the point I was trying to make. For crying out loud!
The following is what he suggested on Ethiopian Economy published in Sept. 2018 and it seems to me the government is more or less following it to the letter not withstanding the "'evidence", of taking away Alibaba's cloud business agreement, consensus is the jury has not reached the verdict.
[[..Can Ethiopia Replicate the Egyptian Experience?
We first need to look at what would be required, which is a hard currency war chest of approximately six billion dollars to absorb the initial currency demand surge from multiple sources that will accompany the liberalization of the foreign exchange regime.
Privatisation, even partially, of some of Ethiopia’s largest state-owned enterprises could generate this financing and more. The funding required to address the foreign exchange crisis, resuscitate the economy and re-launch it on a self-sustaining growth trajectory, along with the appropriate policy reforms indicated, is approximately four billion dollars in a year. It would be two billion dollars in the second year. Even the partial privatization of just Ethio telecom would be adequate to cover these amounts.
Privatisation will not just solve the GTPs’ financing problem, a worthy enough accomplishment in itself, but would also help address three chronic macroeconomic problems. Inflation, the suffocating foreign exchange crisis and the unduly tight squeeze on credit to the private sector.
In the context of huge financing needed to fulfil the plans under the GTPs, privatization represents an excellent means of cashing out on the accumulated net worth of Ethiopia’s state enterprises. Indeed, there is arguably no more justifiable use of this accumulated net worth than spending it on the GTP that the government itself believes is worthy of supreme sacrifice from all corners of society.
Corrective policy measures are urgently needed to restore economic activity and balance. The economy needs a large, non-debt, foreign currency infusion and a liberalisation of the exchange rate regime to a managed float. This requires a war chest of six billion dollars after which market forces will balance supply and demand of foreign exchange.
Fortunately, in Ethiopia’s case, there is a viable path out of this mess. Privatisation – even if only partially, of a few large state-owned enterprises can finance all of the GTP objectives. The benefits of privatisation extend well beyond just providing funds for the GTPs. Two other significant advantages of privatisation are as important, if not more so than getting funding for GTPs.
First and foremost, privatization will, if done rightly, offer a cure for inflation. Inflation in Ethiopia has been linked heavily to a financing problem. More broadly, with government divesting its holdings in key areas of the economy, there would be a healthy re-balancing of ratios such as private investment-to-GDP and private manufacturing-to-GDP. This means a more competitive and more efficient economy with higher productivity.
In addition, it is desirable to have not one but two strong engines, both private and public, driving Ethiopia‘s economy and privatisation by attracting foreign investment, know how, and dynamism in key GTP supported sectors can play a major part in making this possible.
The newest thinking on the developmental state model, aims to bringing structural change back to the core of development strategies, and it emphasises the important roles for the market and the state in the process of promoting economic development.
It prescribes that the market should be the basic mechanism for resource allocation, but that government must play an active role in coordinating investments for industrial upgrading and diversification.
The New Structuralist Economics or Development Economics 3.0 is the third wave of development thinking that Ethiopia needs to adopt as its core development strategy. It is simply a learning and experience-based upgrade and extension of the developmental state model that Ethiopia has been following.
It would take six months to resolve the foreign exchange crisis.
The first step is securing the required six billion dollar war chest to absorb the initial currency demand surge from multiple sources that will accompany the liberalisation of the foreign exchange regime. This can be secured within six months through a non-debt commercial bridge financing tied to the privatisation of Ethio telecom.
This ought to be followed by signing into place a managed float of the Birr. Voilà, problem solved!..]]
BY ERMIAS AMELGA
ERMIAS AMELGA, AN ECONOMIST AND A BUSINESSMAN ENGAGED IN MANUFACTURING, COMMERCIAL BANKING, INVESTMENT BANKING AND REAL ESTATE.
https://addisfortune.net/columns/ethiop ... code-blue/
