"ALGERIA", Aref Rayess (1928-2005), (Lebanon).
One in ten people on earth is hungry. Over 2 billion people cannot have a full meal. That number is only growing.
In Malaysia, the data from the eKasih system indicated that as of July 31, 2022, 136,923 households were in the extreme poor category, while 308,699 households were categorised as being poor. However, the effects of the Covid-19 pandemic – which saw clientel capitalism colliding with the crisis – had caused the rate of absolute poverty to increase by 8.4% in 2020.
UNICEF in a study on urban low-cost flats’ households have found that:
Yet, under this mode of a capitalist system the country has spored - during the covid-19 pandemic - five billionaires within a year that are also benefitting the Big Pharma.
It needs to be reminded that the country’s relative poverty rate stood at 16.2% in 2020 which is high for a country “developing” since 1960s under a suite of neoliberalism economic policies.
In 2020, the Department of Statistics Malaysia (DOSM) indicated that there are four million people working in the gig economy in Malaysia; independent think-tank, Emir Research, confirmed that about 26% of the Malaysian labour force were full-time gig workers, reaching 30% by 2021.
However,
Basing on a transnational corporation’s (TNC) food delivery service being paid RM$5 per hour and the minimum RM$3 per order, with 240 hours of work a month, a gig-rider would likely get about RM$1,200. If the person makes 260 deliveries, he/she will earn RM$780. The total gross earnings for the month would be RM$1980; in the Federal capital of Kuala Lumpur, a single person estimated monthly costs-of-living is RM$2,106 without rent!
[ see WORKERS ]
Thus, is it any surprise that the top 20% of population – the T20 – possess 46.2% of the national income share, while M40 have 37.4% of the national income share but the bottom 40% of population – the B40 – only get 16.4% of the national income share of wealth (see also Khalid, 2019).
Bumiputera in the top income groups (the top 1 per cent and the 10 per cent) benefitted the most from national economic growth
Indeed, according to World Bank 2021 Report on Malaysia absolute income inequality has been raising when compared to her ASEAN peers.
Coupled with a low income regime, and a high inflationary cost-of-living, is it any wonder, too, that many Malaysian workers are in debt. This is because, through the years, the wages and salaries of Malaysian workers had grew less than 1%, or about RM17 in real terms, according to Bank Negara Malaysia data released.
Of most concern, there is marginal wage increment of young workers with post-secondary education since 2004:
It comes at a time, - post-pandemic - when more than RM$145 billion have already withdrawn by account holders from their Employees Provident Fund, says the Ministry of Finance.
We are a country - endowed with many natural resources - yet has much to loose through a serial systemic odious corruption syndrome and a lack of an efficient public service deliverance amongst other dark forces changing Malaysia.
In fact, as a result of underdevelopment of development through the years, Malaysia’s total government debt and liabilities as of June 2022 is estimated to be at RM$1.42 trillion and will rise further next year. Total debt and liabilities are represented as 82 per cent of GDP.
Whereas, Singapore has a SG$1.57 Trillion in her national reserves, and the Norwegian Sovereign Wealth has a holding of US$1.2 Trillion.
During 2021, 52.4% of Malaysia gross borrowings was used to settle outstanding debts alone, read The Budget 2023.
Globally, many countries are facing the greatest human cost have the fewest resources to alleviate it. Even when faced with questions of survival, many governments cannot spend on their people because they are weighed down by unsustainable and odious debt, (Paulo Nakatani and Rémy Herrera, The South Has Already Repaid its External Debt to the North: But the North Denies its Debt to the South, Monthly Review June 01, 2007).
Take Zambia: although a major copper producer, almost half its 20 million people can’t get enough to eat. Instead of supporting its people, the government is forced to pay nearly two thirds of government revenue to service its US$17 billion external debt. These payments are more than what the country is able to invest in health, education, social protection, water, and sanitation — all put together.
In 2020, almost 40% of its people lived in ‘extreme poverty’, (Jomo, September 2022).In 2019, the middle-income country’s human development index score was a low 0.538, which dropped to 0.346, when adjusted for inequality.
Zambia’s creditors are diverse, ranging from the Chinese state through to US asset management behemoth Blackrock. This make-up — 46% is owed to private lenders, 22% to China, 8% to other governments, including France, and 18% to multilateral institutions — reveals the complexity of contemporary capitalism.
Who controls Zambia’s future?
Whatever the answer, it is not Zambians.The Zambian government had sought over US$8 billion worth of debt relief. The International Monetary Fund is playing ball but with a sting in the tail. The IMF is helping renegotiate Zambia’s debt repayment schedule with foreign creditors with the aim of drastically reducing the interest payments that have to be made over the next three years. But, even the IMF itself admits this is just kicking the can to another debt crisis for the country in the second half of this decade.
The perpetual debt crisis is not new. Debt has been used as a weapon against countries in the Global South for decades. Again and again, the people suffer while creditors are protected. While the regime of debt reigns, most states cannot be sovereign and most people will not be free.
Temporary relief, even substantial debt write downs led by the Global North, such as the 2005 Gleneagles G8 debt write off on US$40 billion, would not break the cycle of circulating debts.
In the space of two decades, the sub-Sahara region’s debt service has reached new records, quadrupling from US$9.87 billion to US$34.13 billion, with a peak US$37.48 billion in 2018. In 2019, more than 60% of these Developing Countries spent more on debt service than on health expenditure. Debt servicing in these 10 countries absorbed between 5.3% and 42.6% of government revenue, (Eric Toussaint & Milan Rivié, An unsustainable burden of debt afflicts the peoples of Sub-Saharan Africa, CADTM 10 May 2021).
Debt service for DCs in the Sub-Saharan Africa region (US$ billion)
Debt is a relation of power. Until the debtor countries are more powerful, people will go without food, healthcare and prosperity.
The then-leader of Burkina Faso, Thomas Sankara, made this point powerfully to his fellow African leaders at the 1987 Summit of the Organisation of Africa Unity. He called for indebted states to form a united front against debt and stop paying. Sankara knew that such an act would turn the world on its head, challenging the domination of North against South.
No one state is powerful enough to act alone. As he remarked with tragic prescience, “if Burkina Faso stands alone in refusing to pay, I will not be here for the next conference.”
Less than three months after uttering those words, Thomas Sankara was assassinated in a Western-backed coup.
When governments fail to act together to break debt’s shackles, people take matters into their own hands. The last spike in global food prices in 2010-2012 was accompanied by a world historic and globe-spanning wave of protests, most notably in, but far from confined to, the Arab world.
The 2022 wave of protest is just beginning. Already masses have had taken to the streets in Sri Lanka, Bangladesh, Iran, Sudan, Kenya, Ecuador, Indonesia and Albania.
More will come; the peoples of the world know we can’t eat debt.
To turn protest into politics, we must bring together the diverse exploited sections of our societies into a unified front for change and then unite those across borders to have a chance to turn the world on its head and free ourselves from the domination whose face is debt.
Excerpts from
and the contributions from the Collective on GeoEconomics
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