Mereja.Forum

[Zmeselo]

[Zmeselo]

Another troubling report, this time from The Economist, highlighting how Abiy Ahmed’s so-called “reform agenda” of liberalization and privatization is failing as it has been derailed by corruption, conflict, and chaos.

Everything this incompetent leader touches seems to fall apart. https://economist.com/middle-east-and-a ... ralisation…

[DefendTheTruth]

Why don't you care more about your own Sing-a-Poor first, if you are a human?

Here are people who can differentiate between fiction and reality. I went through that The Economist report after the title caught my eyes somewhere today and spent few minutes to came back with just few more garbage.

Can The Economist even enter Sing-a-Poor and report over the prosperity over there?

Bunch of losers!

[Zmeselo]

Rich shitopian starvin' marvin, 99% of my posts are about my country.

Every now & then, it's fun to deflate egos like yours though.

Why don't you care more about your own Sing-a-Poor first, if you are a human?

Here are people who can differentiate between fiction and reality. I went through that The Economist report after the title caught my eyes somewhere today and spent few minutes to came back with just few more garbage.

Can The Economist even enter Sing-a-Poor and report over the prosperity over there?

Bunch of losers!

[DefendTheTruth]

Rich shitopian starvin' marvin, 99% of my posts are about my country.

Every now & then, it's fun to deflate egos like yours though.

Why don't you care more about your own Sing-a-Poor first, if you are a human?

Here are people who can differentiate between fiction and reality. I went through that The Economist report after the title caught my eyes somewhere today and spent few minutes to came back with just few more garbage.

Can The Economist even enter Sing-a-Poor and report over the prosperity over there?

Bunch of losers!

deflate? Do you even understand the meaning of the word? I am pretty sure, you don't.

You can never deflate something based on pure fiction, unless you are truly an idiot!

Anyhow why didn't you answer the simple question, while you are at it, which goes like "Can The Economist even enter Sing-a-Poor and report over the prosperity over there?"

[Wedi]

The Economist
*******
https://economist.com/middle-east-and-a ... ralisation

The dark side of #Ethiopia’s liberalisation

The fruits of promising reforms are under threat from waste, graft and conflict

For the past couple of years much of Addis Ababa, Ethiopia’s capital, was reduced to rubble by demolitions. Now luxury apartments, parks and cycle lanes are rising from the ruins. Abiy Ahmed, Ethiopia’s prime minister, believes the old city must make way for a cleaner, shinier one.

Mr Abiy is transforming not just Addis, but Ethiopia. Long one of Africa’s most state-controlled economies, the east African country of 135m people has recently begun to liberalise. A year ago it floated its currency, the birr, and entered an IMF programme worth $3.4bn (3% of GDP). A raft of reforms will radically alter its economic system. “What they are trying to do is comparable to the transition economies after the fall of the Soviet Union,” says Stefan Dercon of Oxford University, who has advised several Ethiopian governments on economic policy. Ethiopia hopes to follow the path of countries such as Poland and become an economic power. Yet it may end up looking more like Russia, its transition derailed by corruption, conflict and chaos.

Following decades of communist dictatorship, the government began to allow some space for free markets in the 1990s. But it retained tight restrictions on private enterprise, growing through debt-fuelled state investment in infrastructure. Yet since a sovereign default in 2023, following a devastating civil war, forced Ethiopia to ask the IMF for a bailout, it has opened up banking, retail and other sectors to foreign competition, and relaxed restrictions on repatriating profits. On July 1st parliament approved a law allowing foreigners to own property. The country plans to privatise some state-owned firms. In January it opened a stock exchange.

Economic performance has been encouraging, according to official data. Despite a sharp depreciation of the birr, which has lost more than half its value against the dollar over the past year, Ethiopia’s central bank says it brought annual inflation down to 14.4% in May, compared with 23% the previous year. The fiscal deficit has shrunk to 1.5% of GDP, the IMF reckons, down from 4.2% in 2022. The cheaper birr has boosted exports, particularly of coffee and gold, helping to alleviate dollar shortages. On July 2nd Ethiopia reached a deal with external creditors, including China, to restructure some $3.5bn of debt, 11% of the total. On July 3rd the World Bank agreed to give the country $1bn worth of grants and concessional loans. The IMF estimates that the economy grew by 7.2% in the year to July.

This rosy picture may not be the whole story. The IMF relies on government data for its estimates, but has repeatedly complained about “the quality and availability of economic statistics” in Ethiopia.

The World Bank said this month that it could not estimate Ethiopia’s national income for the current fiscal year. It said it needed more time to take the sudden depreciation of the birr into account. Proxy measures such as electricity demand indicate the economy is growing—but probably not as fast as official figures suggest.

[Deqi-Arawit]

Skuni.
At least Ethiopia has an economy. What do you have?

[Fiyameta]

An elderly lady in my community contacted me seeking help with her finances. I immediately looked into her credit history to find clues on why she was experiencing financial shortfalls.

One particular transaction caught my attention, and I delved into it to find out why she had borrowed a substantial amount of money from a local predatory loan shark that charges extremely high interest rates on loans. I drove the lady to the office to ask more information about why she still had outstanding balance on the loan despite having made monthly payments for over 3 years.

I discovered that the loan sharks tricked her into thinking that she was making payments on the loan, when in fact she was only making payments on the interest with the principal amount left untouched. They were about to take her home which she had used as collateral for the loan!!!

This infuriated me. I threatened to take legal action against the firm citing elderly abuse, by which point the front office staff asked that I speak with their manager who invited us to his office and apologized for what he had called a "misunderstanding." I demanded that he forfeits the outstanding balance or I would take the case to court. After a heated argument, he finally relented and agreed to forfeit the debt.

As the elderly lady and I were seated in the waiting room to sign some papers, I overheard one of the loan sharks in the next room trying to lure an unsuspecting victim into taking out a huge amount of loan by using his home as collateral. The loan shark kept saying.." sir, you have a steady employment... your income is increasing year by year.... you are financially secure...etc...", which sounded like a sales pitch and flattery towards the unsuspecting victim, but I had no doubt that the truth was far from it.

If you are an elderly person with cognitive decline like Deqi Arawit, or a low IQ individual like Deqi Arawit, you are a pushover for a sales pitch. That's how Ethiopia got into this debt crisis. "11% growth my a$$" LOL

[Fiyameta]

There's a common saying in Ethiopia that goes like "ሲሾም ያልበላ ሲሻር ይቆጨዋል", which desensitizes the public to government corruption, as well as helps corrupt government officials relieve themselves from guilt. In Ethiopia, prosperity is symbolized by having a big belly, which most corrupt government officials develop as a result of misusing public offices for their personal enrichment. It is a very strange country led by low IQ individuals.

[Zmeselo]

You're the know-it-all, fessi, so you tell us.

Skuni.
At least Ethiopia has an economy. What do you have?