Évolution récente des stratégies de réforme agraire et de développement rural au Proche-Orient
Depuis les années 50, deux stratégies de développement avec objectifs et groupes cibles différents sont appliquées dans la région du Proche-Orient. La première consiste en un programme de lutte contre la pauvreté qui s'adresse aux paysans pauvres (fellahin) et dont les principales
composantes sont une réforme agraire fondée sur une redistribution des terres,
et des projets publics de mise en valeur des terres et de colonisation rurale à grande échelle.
La seconde stratégie de développement a été lancée vers le milieu des années 80 en liaison avec les programmes étrangers d'allégement de la dette, assortis de certaines conditions en matière de politique de stabilisation, ainsi qu'avec les programmes d'ajustement structurel conçus par la Banque mondiale et le FMI sous la pression des puissants créanciers occidentaux. L'analyse des effets de ces réformes économiques en ce qui concerne la répartition des terres montre qu'elles ont des conséquences négatives pour les ruraux pauvres ainsi que pour les petits agriculteurs, les acheteurs nets de nourriture et sur le nombre croissant de travailleurs agricoles sans terre et qu'elles entraînent une diminution des salaires réels et du revenu par habitant. Les estimations disponibles révèlent une situation plus inquiétante encore: l'augmentation prévue du nombre de personnes vivant en situation de pauvreté absolue dans un Proche-Orient majoritairement riche (Pakistan, Afghanistan et Somalie exclus), qui devrait passer de 80 millions en 1990 à près de 110 millions en l'an 2000. Les terres cultivables étant aujourd'hui - elles le seront plus encore demain - de plus en plus rares dans un Proche-Orient au climat aride, en raison d'une grave pénurie d'eau et du coût élevé de l'irrigation, l'avenir de la génération actuelle des ruraux pauvres risque d'être sombre si la tendance présente se maintient.
Cambios recientes en las estrategias de reforma agraria y desarrollo rural en el Cercano Oriente
Desde la década de los años cincuenta, en la región del Cercano Oriente se han observado dos estrategias de desarrollo con objetivos y beneficiarios contrapuestos. La primera fue un plan de lucha contra la pobreza concebido para beneficiar a los campesinos pobres (fellaheen). Consistía en una reforma de distribución y en grandes planes públicos de rehabilitación y colonización de tierras. La segunda estrategia surgió a mediados de la década de los ochenta, en conjunción con los programas de alivio de la deuda, las condiciones de la política de macroestabilización y los programas de ajuste estructural introducidos por los poderosos acreedores occidentales y formulados por el Banco Mundial y el Fondo Monetario Internacional. Del examen de los efectos distributivos de estas reformas económicas se desprenden consecuencias desfavorables para los pobres rurales y los vendedores netos de alimentos, que forman parte de los pequeños agricultores, y los trabajadores sin tierras, grupo cada vez más numeroso, cuyos salarios e ingresos reales por persona han disminuido. Se estima que aumentará el número de personas que viven en la pobreza absoluta en una región (con exclusión del Pakistán, Afganistán y Somalia) como el Cercano Oriente donde predomina la opulencia y cuya población pasará de 80 millones en 1990 a casi 110 millones en el año 2000. Si perduran las tendencias actuales, además de la escasez presente y futura de tierras cultivables en la parte árida de la región y de agua, y los elevados costos del riego, las perspectivas para los campesinos pobres son sombrías.
M. Riad El-Ghonemy
Dr
Riad El-Ghonemy is a Fellow in the Department of Economics, American University,
Cairo, and Senior Research Associate at the International Development Centre at
Queen Elizabeth House, University of Oxford, United Kingdom
Since the 1950s, the Near East region has witnessed two development strategies with different objectives and intended beneficiaries. The first was an anti-poverty scheme designed to benefit poor peasants (fellaheen). Its core was a distributive land reform and large-scale public land reclamation and settlement schemes. The second development strategy emerged around the mid-1980s in response to the foreign debt relief programmes that were being adopted and the conditions that these programmes imposed with regard to macrostabilization policy and structural adjustment programmes prescribed by powerful Western creditors and designed by the World Bank and the Internationl Monetary Fund (IMF). The distributive impacts of these economic reforms had adverse effects on the rural poor, small farmers who were net food buyers and the increasing numbers of landless workers. Real wages and per caput income also declined. The most worrying aspect of the available estimates is a projected increase in the number of people living in absolute poverty in the predominantly affluent Near East (excluding Pakistan, Afghanistan and Somalia), from 80 million in 1990 to nearly 110 million in 2000. Given the increasing scarcity of cultivable land in the arid Near East, which is caused by serious water shortage and the high costs of irrigation, the prospects for the present generation of rural poor are gloomy if the current trend continues.
In April 1996, the Rural Development Division of FAO held a Rural Development International Workshop in Godollo, Hungary. The post-cold war ideological shift was a point of reference for that workshop. Property rights to land are probably more susceptible to ideological change than any other institution. An overview of the workshop background material suggests that two related questions need to be addressed:
These questions are too wide to be addressed adequately
in this article. However, the underlying issues can be sketched out, backed by
empirical evidence.
Throughout the history of the Near East region, the
private property-based economy has predominated, both before and after countries
have gained independence. With the exception of Turkey, the Islamic Republic of
Iran and part of Saudi Arabia, the Near East was ruled for between one and five
centuries by European colonial powers (Ottoman, United Kingdom, French and
Italian) who shaped their economies, including the agrarian systems, along
capitalist lines. In order to serve the colonial rulers' interests, private
landownership, together with mortgages and an appropriate legal framework, were
imposed on traditional tenure arrangements. This led to increased concentration
of landholdings, landlessness, indebtedness and encroachment on to nomadic
groups' grazing areas. The combined effect was a dualist pattern for
agricultural development, with a vast area of traditional dry farming breeding
poverty and unequal opportunities for progress, and a relatively small area of
capital-intensive farming. Underdevelopment problems were generated by violations of the institution of private property within a monopolized rural economy and by denying fellaheens (peasant farmers) their entitlements.
During the initial stage of the developments that followed the independence of North African countries in the 1950s, the coups d'état in Egypt (1952), Iraq and the Syrian Arab
Republic (1958) and the revolutions in Iran of the Shahs (1962, 1967),
strategies aimed at removing the institutional barriers to progress. Foremost
among these barriers were violations of property rights in imperfect agrarian
market economies (e.g. an institutional monopoly in land, credit and labour
markets) which resulted in peasant farmers and national economies losing
potential gains. Moreover, interclass relationships based on exploitation and
subservience caused social unrest which cannot be explained in economic terms
alone.
In many countries, the strategies adopted were based on reforming
defective agrarian systems. With the exception of Algeria (1965-1982) and South
Yemen (1968-1992), private property rights and individual family farms
constituted the institutional foundation of reconstructed rural economies. In
addition to fixing ceilings on private ownership and redistributing the
expropriated balance, foreign-owned farms were expropriated with compensation.
Furthermore, rental values were reduced and terms of tenancy regulated. In
several countries (Egypt, the Libyan Arab Jamahiriya, the Sudan, the Syrian Arab
Republic and Saudi Arabia) public lands were reclaimed and mostly allocated to
small landowners and tenants. Thus, some of the features of these new agrarian
policies were similar to those of the former Soviet Union and Eastern Europe,
especially with regard to the establishment of state farms and
government-administered cooperatives whose members, however, retained individual
property rights to land.
Other elements of the 1952-1975 strategies were:
migration facilities for an expanded international labour market (Europe for
Turkish and Algerian workers and oil-rich countries for Egyptian, Jordanian,
Sudanese and Yemeni workers); the provision of health and education services free of charge to rural people; significant income support measures, including generous food subsidies and social security programmes, which supplemented the long-established Islamic tradition of social security payments from richer to poorer people; and, in a few countries, notably Tunisia, Egypt and Jordan, birth control and family planning services were provided voluntarily in order to reduce the ever-increasing population growth rates, which were about 3 percent per annum in the 1970s and 1980s.
The author has documented elsewhere the changes in nutritional status, living standards, poverty levels and concentration of landholdings (El-Ghonemy, 1968, 1976, 1980, 1990a, 1990b, 1992, 1993a, 1993b; El-Ghonemy, Tyler and Couvreur, 1993; FAO, 1984a, 1984b, 1986). Table 1 gives some comparable data for five countries during the period of anti-poverty agrarian reform and rural development strategies.
TABLE
1
Land redistribution ratio, changes in agricultural growth rates, land concentration index and rural poverty levels, 1950-1971
Country |
Land area |
Beneficiaries |
Average |
Land |
Rural
| ||
|
1950-60 |
1961-70 |
Year |
Index |
| ||
Egypt |
10 |
14 |
2.8 |
2.9 |
1950 |
0.740 |
56.1 (1950) |
Iran |
34 |
45 circa. |
3.8 |
4.4 |
N/A |
|
38.0 (1971) |
Iraq |
60 |
56 |
1.5 |
5.7 |
1958 |
0.902 |
80.0 (1950)
circa. |
Morocco |
4 |
2 |
N/A |
4.5 |
1973 |
0.755 |
45.0 (1974) |
Tunisia |
57 |
49 |
N/A |
0.1 |
1962 |
0.622 |
20.0 (1974)
49** |
Notes:
N/A = data not available.
* Land concentration is measured in terms of the Gini index (or coefficient) which ranges from 0 to 1; the larger the index, the greater the degree of inequality in the size distribution of landholdings.
** These are estimates made by the International Labour Organisation (ILO) using poverty lines different from those of the Tunisian Institute of Statistics given in the preceding column.
Sources: El-Ghonemy, 1990b and 1993c.
In addition to the favourable record shown in Table 1,
investment in human capital between 1960 and 1979 reduced infant mortality by an
average of 33 percent and increased life expectancy by an average of an average
of 10 percent. These welfare gains represent increased potential in everyday
life and an accumulation of human capital at the national level. In addition,
there have also been such unquantifiable gains as increased self-respect and
dignity among peasant farmers and the motivation to participate in the rural
development process. Although these are significant elements of anti-poverty
strategy, they are difficult issues for analysts, who are dependent on
statistics, to assess.
It is wrong to attribute poverty reduction to agrarian reform on its own. As suggested earlier, migrant workers' remittances to rural areas, technological advances (particularly in expanding irrigation), pricing systems, food subsidies, small-scale non-farm activities and income-support measures are equally significant factors. On the negative side, however, prolonged droughts, political instability, civil unrest and frequent wars between countries, and the impact of world market instability are only a few of many factors. The 1985 and 1991 famines in the Sudan, as well as those in Mauritania and Somalia, are reminders of the rural poor's vulnerability to the disastrous consequences of floods and prolonged droughts in the Near East.
Human capital gains and poverty reduction rates could
have been greater if the momentum for wider-scale land redistribution - which
was created by the historically unique political environment that prevailed in
the 1950s and 1960s - had not been dissipated. Many eligible tenants and
millions of landless hired workers did not benefit, because the ceilings on
private landownership, above which the balance was expropriated for
redistribution, were very high. FAO studies and the results of the 1980
agricultural census indicate that landless households (those who neither own nor
rent any land) represented between 20 and 35 percent of total agricultural
households in the 1980s. These households were denied the opportunity of owning
a piece of land which would have provided them with security of food, employment
and earnings. In retrospect, it seems that the polemics of land reform
proclamations were used by politicians to pacify the discontented rural poor
without harming the interests of large farmers, in anticipation of the latter's
political support of the new national leaderships.
The other missed
opportunity concerns misuse of the plentiful oil finds made between 1973 and
1981 in seven oil-rich countries in the Near East. Human history has probably
never experienced such sudden affluence from a single depletable
commodity.
The most dramatic jump, both in income per caput and in
governments' (or ruling families') receipt of full economic rent, occurred in
two fiscal years (1973/74 and 1979/80). These windfalls coincided with a period
when agrarian reform was being implemented in the oil-based economies (Algeria,
the Libyan Arab Jamahiriya, the Islamic Republic of Iran and Iraq). The case of
the Libyan Arab Jamahiriya is a useful illustration of the extent of the sudden
change. In 1940, the Libyan Arab Jamahiriya (along with Saudi Arabia and Kuwait)
was among the poorest of the developing countries. In less than 25 years its per
caput income rocketed from US$990 in 1961 to US$7 170 in 1985, a rate of
increase that it had taken five rich industrialized countries - Canada, France,
Germany, Japan and the United States - 220 years to achieve (1750-1970)
(Andiaanse and Waardenburg, 1992: Table 1.1).
Have the four oil-rich countries that are implementing land reform-centred rural development strategies succeeded in improving the rural economy and diversifying income sources? Table 2 shows how agriculture, in many countries, has been neglected in terms of its share in total public investment relative to its share in the total labour force. This has led to falling productivity per working person in agriculture and has increased countries' dependence on food imports to feed their own people. In the 1980s, agriculture became the least buoyant sector of the economy. It has also lost its pre-oil boom position as the fastest-growing non-oil producing sector in the economy, when it employed the majority of the total workforce to produce food and tradable commodities. The sectors that have replaced it are the non-productive ones of militarization and government administration, as well as construction, which brought high profits to city contractors and the rural elite but produced only non-tradable goods.
TABLE 2
Present and potential cultivable land, gross investment rates and agricultural production, total per worker, 1970-1992
Cultivable land |
Agricultural production growth |
| |||||||
Country |
% of total area of the country |
Area |
% of currently cultivable |
Annual % growth of agric. GDP |
Productivity of working persons in
agriculture |
Gross investment as % of GDP | |||
|
|
|
|
1970-80 |
1981-92 |
1970-80 |
1981-92 |
1980 |
1992 |
Algeria |
3.0 |
2.60 |
24.0 |
7.5 |
5.3 |
-0.8 |
2.5 |
37 |
28 |
Egypt |
2.5 |
0.08 |
3.0 |
2.8 |
2.4 |
-0.9 |
1.0 |
31 |
23 |
Iran |
8.6 |
0.36 |
0.3 |
3.9 |
2.5 |
3.1 |
1.7 |
N/A |
20 |
Iraq |
12.0 |
3.41 |
41.6 |
-1.5 |
2.0 |
1.2 |
2.5 |
33 |
26 |
Jordan |
3.5 |
0.11 |
27.5 |
1.7 |
4.9 |
9.0 |
4.4 |
21 |
22 |
Libya |
1.0 |
1.19 |
49.5 |
11.1 |
4.1 |
1.7 |
3.0 |
32 |
N/A |
Mauritania |
1.0 |
1.99 |
55.3 |
-1.0 |
1.5 |
2.7 |
0.3 |
38 |
16 |
Morocco |
19.4 |
1.60 |
13.5 |
1.1 |
5.3 |
1.3 |
7.9 |
23 |
22 |
Oman |
0.1 |
0.04 |
66.7 |
N/A |
N/A |
N/A |
N/A |
22 |
16 |
Saudi Arabia |
0.5 |
0.07 |
7.2 |
5.3 |
14.0 |
0.1 |
18.8 |
26 |
21 |
Sudan |
5.2 |
66.98 |
81.7 |
3.3 |
-0.1 |
0.5 |
-1.4 |
12 |
10 |
Syria |
26.6 |
0.32 |
5.8 |
8.6 |
-0.3 |
9.5 |
-1.2 |
25 |
10 |
Tunisia |
19.5 |
0.48 |
16.9 |
4.1 |
3.8 |
-0.2 |
3.2 |
28 |
26 |
Turkey |
32.3 |
6.42 |
21.2 |
3.4 |
2.8 |
3.8 |
1.2 |
27 |
20 |
N/A = data not available.
Sources: Cultivable land data are from: FAO, 1993a; Total and per working person agricultural production are based on data given in World Bank 1982, 1993 and 1994, and FAO, 1989 and 1993b; Investment rates are from World Bank 1982, 1993 and 1994.
One of the worst cases of wasted oil money and loss of human resources is that of Iraq, which dissipated the opportunities it had for completing an extensive agrarian reform and rural development programme (see Table 1). The magnitude of these missed opportunities is illustrated by the fact that Iraq has the third-largest area of potential cultivable land in the entire Near East region, after the Sudan and Turkey. Nearly 80 percent of this land (4 million ha) could have been cultivated, and the present area of irrigated land doubled, if the roughly estimated US$450 billion that was spent during the nine-year Iran-Iraq war and the 43-day Gulf war had been channelled into agricultural development instead (Alnsary, 1994). This US$450 billion represents approximately $63 000 per rural inhabitant, and could have been allocated to health, education and housing services. Even worse than this, however, are the loss of an estimated 750 000 Iraqi people, who were killed during the two wars (McNamara, 1991), and the post-war hunger and collapse of rural people's purchasing power, which led to an increase in the proportion of undernourished children, from 9 to 35 percent. The collapse was particularly severe among the families displaced by both wars, estimated in 1994 to be 45 percent of the total number of poor people. Researchers also reported that child mortality increased fourfold in just one year (1992) and that the incidence of rural poverty in Iraq, for that same year, was greater than that in India2. It could, however, be claimed that part of the Iraqi disaster was the result of a shift in ideology which led the former Soviet Union (a strong ally of Iraq and its largest supplier of arms and technicians) to desert its former ally. Iraqi interests and people were thereby sacrificed to the pursuit of improved international relations with Western powers.
While Near Eastern countries were making good progress in
redistributing wealth, reducing poverty and increasing per caput income, their
efforts were disturbed in the early 1980s. The wind of change blew from the
West, under the influence of the United States (the Reagan administration) and
the United Kingdom (Thatcher's Conservative government). Through their voting
power, these countries put pressure on the World Bank and IMF, encouraging them
to make foreign debt relief programmes conditional and, thus, to impose changes
in development strategy priorities. Heavily indebted countries were faced with a
dilemma; national policy-makers had either to accept the harsh effects of
economic reforms (and their politically and socially unpopular results) imposed
by foreign creditors via IMF's stabilization programme and the World Bank's
structured adjustment lending programme, or they had to exhibit a nationalistic
attitude by rejecting the imposed policy reform and continuing the anti-poverty
efforts to which they had just committed their countries by adopting, in July
1979, the Programme of Action of the World Conference on Agrarian Reform and
Rural Development (WCARRD). They found that the longer a government postpones
taking action, the narrower its options become.
In some
countries (e.g. Algeria, Egypt, the Sudan and Tunisia), programmes were delayed
when political stability was threatened by urban working class riots. However,
the mounting pressure exerted on economies by high annual debt servicing
payments, and the adverse effects of prolonged economic recession in the West
accelerated the adoption of the prescribed economic reforms, irrespective of
their adverse impacts on distribution.
The Near East countries' agricultural public sectors are
much smaller than are those of the centrally planned and managed economies of
the former Soviet Union and Eastern Europe, where the size of state farms,
collective cooperatives and the enterprises that produce and supply the means of
production were colossal. For example, in the 1980s, state farms covered only
5.8 percent of the total cultivable area in Egypt, Iraq, the Sudan and Tunisia,
while the proportions in the Soviet Union and Cuba were 66 and 85 percent,
respectively. However, in the Near East, the effects of privatization were
greater on the earnings of employees who were guaranteed high wages, bonuses and
services, regardless of the actual level of productivity in communal tenure.
Several studies have shown that growth rates and labour productivity in communal
tenure production are not inferior to those in individual tenure systems
(El-Ghonemy, 1990a). This also applies to the privatization of communal tenure
in tribal areas; there seems to be no firm evidence of the productive
superiority of individual farming over grouped or communally held farms.
Perhaps the greatest impacts of price liberalization during
the processes of stabilization and privatization are those on the supply of such
inputs as fertilizers, insecticides, seeds, pumped water, farm machinery and
fuel. This is a result both of their delivery becoming dependent on private
trade and of the removal of subsidies. For example, a study in Egypt (November
1994) showed that a sharp rise in fertilizer and insecticide prices inhibited
many small landholders (owning less than 1 ha per head) from purchasing the
quantity required and, hence, led to a decline in crop outputs. At the same
time, larger farmers - especially those producing exportable crops (cotton,
rice, vegetables) - were able to purchase these inputs and increase production.
Between 1985 and 1992, the largest increases in cultivated areas were those of
wheat and sugar cane, owing primarily to increased farmgate prices, which had
been very low when prices were administered by the government. This increase in
both price and area cultivated of wheat and sugar cane contrasts with a fall in
cotton area, from 480 000 ha in 1980 to 330 000 ha in 1992, caused by low prices
and high production costs making cotton less favourable than other crops.
The combination of increased production costs for small
farmers' crops, declining real wages of farm workers and a sharp rise in the
rental values of leased lands has greatly harmed low-income groups and landless
hired workers. Egyptian data show that, during 1992, average wage rates fell in
real terms to half their 1986 values. In addition, the falling demand for
migrant rural workers worsened their poverty conditions. The deterioration in
annual incomes was worse in the case of tenants who, until 1992, had been
protected by the 1952 land reform law against eviction and guaranteed a low
rental value equivalent to seven times the land tax. These protective measures
and the resulting tenants' gains were lost by the 1993 law, which allows rental
values to be determined by market forces from 1996/97 onwards. Many landowners
recovered lands from the numerous tenants who had become hired workers and could
not purchase land on the open market. Moreover, priority for the sale of
publicly owned lands changed from allocation to small tenants, who could
purchase at low prices payable by installments over 30 years, to sale at open
auction to the highest bidder, who is usually a land speculator or rich farmer.
As a result, the area of land rented fell sharply from 47 percent of the total
cultivated in 1967 to 24 percent in 1983, and has dropped further over the last
few years. The proportion of small landowners (owning less than 2 ha) has also
declined gradually, while that of the medium-sized (owning 10 to 20 ha) has
increased.
The sad result is increasing poverty and
inequality of income distribution in rural Egypt. The results of household
expenditure surveys in 1981 and 1991 indicate a fall in the share of the lower
30 percent of the income scale, compared with a considerable rise in share for
the upper 30 percent of total households surveyed. Rural poverty in 1991 was
estimated at 54 percent, compared with 29 percent in 1982 and 28 percent in
1975. The number of rural poor has greatly increased, from 5.7 million in 1975
to nearly 15 million in 1991. This increase in rural poverty, in terms both of
number and percentage, represents a fall in living standards, rather than a
rise. In fact, the author estimates that the adopted economic policy reforms
have brought poverty incidence back to its 1950 level of 56 percent, prior to
the distributive land reform policy which was introduced in 1952.
Faced with peasant discontent over tight state control of
agrarian reform cooperatives, policy-makers in the three countries introduced
measures aimed at
the decentralization of farm management
decisions, greater entrepreneurial freedom for beneficiaries and the
registration of private landownership. Several inefficient state farms were sold
and tenancy arrangements - which had been abolished by an earlier land reform -
were reintroduced. The aim of this post-1985 deregulation policy was to
strengthen the family farm economy and make it less dependent on government
support (e.g. Algeria Law No. 19 of December 1987). In the Islamic Republic of
Iran, several farm corporations were liquidated and their ownership rights
individualized. However, the Khomeini government's redistribution of private
landholdings that exceeded three times the average size of a family farm in each
locality was short-lived and, instead, the distribution of public lands was
accelerated, allowing large farmers and traders to accumulate land. The
anti-land reform faction within the ruling Mullahs, including some Ayatollahs in
the powerful Council of Guards and the Parliament, called for the return of land
expropriated during the Shah regime to its original landowners. By early 1991,
the Determination Council had approved the redistribution of 450 000 ha of land
that had been seized by tenants when large landlords fled the country after the
collapse of the Shah regime. The end of the redistributive land reform was
reflected in the Minister of Agriculture's commitment, announced in 1989, to
make no intervention on private property rights3.
In addition, the government allocated nearly 1 million ha of public agricultural
land for use and development by business people in the private sector, supported
financially by the state-owned Agricultural Bank.
As economic reforms are not conditional on government
protection of the poor or on the enhancement of priority areas of social concern
(education, health, income support, social security and food subsidy),
governments have responded differently when making the budget cuts required by
structural adjustment programmes. It should also be remembered that sustainable
growth and poverty reduction are dependent on adequate resources being allocated
to agriculture. Agriculture is the food producing sector of the economy and the
main source of income for rural people, among whom poverty is concentrated. The
poor are absolutely dependent on public services, not because they prefer
government paternalism, but simply because they do not have the means to acquire
literacy, good health, adequate nutritional standards and irrigation facilities
through the private sector.
Since 1980, country
development plans and the government finance statistics published annually by
IMF show a general trend of neglect of these two broad areas of concern which
are essential for the improvement of fundamental human capabilities (such as
literacy and longer life), productivity, employment and incomes of the poor. The
neglect of both agriculture and basic social services is suggested by data given
in Tables 2 and 3. Military spending has been included as an unproductive
expenditure compared with the social necessities of health and education. Total
public expenditure/consumption as a percentage of gross national product (GDP)
has, since 1985, increased in rich countries (except Saudi Arabia) and in low-
and middle-income economies (except the Islamic Republic of Iran, Morocco,
Jordan, Egypt and Mauritania). Between 1960 and 1991, features of social
imbalance in priority concerns were emerging; for example, governments in most
countries of the region are progressively devoting more resources to education
than to health and have consistently given military spending higher priority
than education and health combined. These comparisons apply to the share
(percentage) in both total public expenditure and gross national product (GNP).
This striking manifestation of imbalance is in a region where high infant
mortality, incidence of malnutrition and illiteracy are still pervasive,
especially in rural areas of rich and poor countries alike.
Table 3 shows a decline, between 1980 and 1991, in health
spending in eight countries, including the oil-rich Saudi Arabia, Oman and the
Islamic Republic of Iran, and a rise in the ratio of military spending to
combined health and education spending in four countries (Turkey, the Syrian
Arab Republic, Egypt and Yemen). Examination of the data for poor countries
shows that, for internal political motives, in 1991 the Sudan and Yemen spent
more on military establishments than on education and health, despite having the
highest poverty indicators of infant mortality, mortality of under
five-year-olds and illiteracy in the Near East. At the other extreme of per
caput income, while the rich Saudi Arabia reduced total public expenditure
between 1985 and 1991, it spent an average of US$200 000 per person on its armed
forces, compared with an average of $17 000 per person on education, although
nearly 40 percent of Saudi Arabian men and 60 percent of women are
illiterate.
Table 3
Shares of health, education and
military spending in national income and total government expenditure in 17
countries, 1960-1991.
Countries |
Health, education and military spending as % of: |
Ratio of military | |||||||||||||||||||
Total public expenditure |
GNP |
| |||||||||||||||||||
Health |
Education |
Military |
Health |
Education |
Military | ||||||||||||||||
1972 |
1980 |
1991 |
1972 |
1980 |
1991 |
1960 |
1980 |
1991 |
1960 |
1980 |
1991 |
1960 |
1980 |
1991 |
1960 |
1980 |
1991 |
1960 |
1980 |
1991 | |
Over US$5 000 | |||||||||||||||||||||
United Arab |
4.5 |
7.5 |
6.7 |
16.0 |
11.3 |
14.2 |
24.5 |
47.5 |
44.0 |
N/A |
0.8 |
1.9 |
N/A |
1.1 |
2.9 |
N/A |
6.2 |
8.3 |
|
310 |
173 |
Kuwait |
5.5 |
4.9 |
7.4 |
15.0 |
9.0 |
14.0 |
8.4 |
12.2 |
N/A |
N/A |
0.5 |
2.9 |
N/A |
1.0 |
3.4 |
N/A |
2.9 |
6.5 |
|
193 |
123 |
Saudi Arabia |
N/A |
N/A |
N/A |
N/A |
N/A |
17.8 |
N/A |
50.0 |
43.0 |
0.6 |
3.6 |
3.1 |
3.2 |
5.0 |
6.2 |
5.7 |
16.6 |
14.0 |
150 |
193 |
151 |
Oman |
5.9 |
2.9 |
5.4 |
3.7 |
4.8 |
11.4 |
39.3 |
51.2 |
35.4 |
N/A |
0.7 |
2.1 |
N/A |
1.2 |
3.5 |
N/A |
13.0 |
16.4 |
|
684 |
293 |
Libya |
N/A |
8.0 |
N/A |
N/A |
18.0 |
N/A |
N/A |
N/A |
N/A |
1.3 |
1.4 |
3.0 |
2.8 |
2.8 |
8.0 |
1.2 |
8.1 |
7.8 |
24 |
156 |
65 |
US$1 000 to $5 000 | |||||||||||||||||||||
Iraq* |
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
1.0 |
N/A |
0.8 |
5.8 |
5.0 |
4.6 |
8.7 |
29.7 |
|
128 |
550 |
|
Iran |
3.6 |
6.4 |
7.9 |
10.4 |
21.3 |
22.4 |
24.1 |
15.9 |
10.3 |
0.8 |
3.0 |
1.5 |
2.4 |
5.2 |
4.1 |
4.5 |
20.1 |
2.1 |
141 |
245 |
38 |
Algeria |
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
1.2 |
1.2 |
5.4 |
5.0 |
4.9 |
9.1 |
2.1 |
2.0 |
1.6 |
31 |
43 |
15 |
Turkey |
3.3 |
3.6 |
3.0 |
18.2 |
14.2 |
17.6 |
15.4 |
15.2 |
10.4 |
0.8 |
2.0 |
1.5 |
2.6 |
2.8 |
2.5 |
5.2 |
2.8 |
6.0 |
159 |
79 |
111 |
Tunisia |
7.4 |
6.5 |
6.3 |
30.5 |
15.5 |
17.5 |
4.9 |
11.1 |
5.6 |
1.6 |
2.5 |
3.3 |
3.3 |
5.6 |
6.1 |
2.2 |
2.9 |
2.9 |
45 |
48 |
31 |
Syria |
1.4 |
0.8 |
1.9 |
11.0 |
5.5 |
7.4 |
37.0 |
47.7 |
31.5 |
0.4 |
0.5 |
0.4 |
2.1 |
6.8 |
4.1 |
7.9 |
17.3 |
16.8 |
316 |
243 |
373 |
Jordan |
N/A |
3.7 |
5.0 |
N/A |
7.3 |
14.0 |
N/A |
25.5 |
27.0 |
0.6 |
1.7 |
1.8 |
3.0 |
6.3 |
5.9 |
16.5 |
13.1 |
10.6 |
464 |
164 |
138 |
Morocco |
3.0 |
3.4 |
3.0 |
19.2 |
17.2 |
18.0 |
12.3 |
17.9 |
13.0 |
1.0 |
1.1 |
0.9 |
3.1 |
7.0 |
5.5 |
2.0 |
6.1 |
4.6 |
49 |
76 |
72 |
Under US$1 000 | |||||||||||||||||||||
Egypt |
N/A |
2.4 |
2.8 |
N/A |
8.0 |
13.4 |
24.1 |
11.4 |
12.7 |
0.6 |
0.5 |
1.0 |
4.1 |
9.0 |
6.1 |
5.5 |
3.0 |
4.0 |
117 |
32 |
52 |
Sudan |
5.4 |
1.4 |
N/A |
9.3 |
9.6 |
|
24.0 |
12.9 |
N/A |
1.0 |
0.3 |
0.2 |
1.9 |
2.6 |
4.0 |
1.5 |
2.8 |
4.0 |
51 |
96 |
95 |
Yemen |
3.6 |
N/A |
N/A |
4.0 |
N/A |
N/A |
32.6 |
33.2 |
N/A |
|
2.1 |
1.5 |
|
8.2 |
5.8 |
|
15.0 |
14.4 |
|
146 |
197 |
Mauritania |
N/A |
N/A |
4.0 |
0.5 |
N/A |
N/A |
N/A |
N/A |
N/A |
05. |
1.2 |
2.0 |
2.1 |
4.1 |
4.7 |
4.1 |
9.9 |
4.1 |
|
187 |
61 |
Notes:
N/A = data not available.
* Data refer to 1982 and 1989, not 1980 and 1991. Iraq's data on military spending (1980) refer to average (1980-1985).
Sources: World Bank, 1983, 1984, 1993, 1994; Wulf, 1991; Economist Intelligence Unit, 1991.
While economic reforms stress the need for increasing investment rates to accelerate the production growth of tradables, available data (Table 2) show that gross domestic investment rates in national income declined in 11 out of 14 countries between 1980 and 1991, and stagnated in two. Agriculture has been hit hard by the fall in investment rates and also by its share in budget cuts. This neglect, during the period 1980 to 1992, is reflected in falling annual rates of agricultural GDP in all the countries, except Mauritania, Morocco and Saudi Arabia, during the same period.
Relatively high public expenditure (an average of 25
percent of GDP), particularly military spending, has created opportunities for
corruption within bureaucracies and between governments and arms importers and
dealers. There is clear evidence of continuing corrupt practices (embezzlement
of public money and property) after the adoption of economic policy reforms for
the privatization of public economic enterprises. Ironically, whereas donor
countries and rich creditors in the West call for anti-corruption measures in
developing countries, their powerful multinational corporations are the first to
seize corruption opportunities when awarding large contracts in the Near East
region.
There is a paradox in these developments.
Contrary to economic wisdom, the increase in corruption and illegal rent-seeking
coincides with privatization of the public sector and austerity in government
spending. Being illiterate and ignorant of their own governments' bureaucratic
procedures, small farmers and the rural poor suffer from extortion by traders,
tax collectors and bureaucrats.
The limited data available on the impacts of recent changes suggest a gloomy prospect for the increasing numbers of wage-dependent landless workers and the rural poor. This forecast is based on the following considerations:
There is no scarcity of ideas, and no need to search for
new strategies. The comprehensive elements and operational principles provided
by the WCARRD Programme of Action were adopted by almost all the countries
concerned in July 1979. These principles represent the outcome of two years of
intellectual discussion on the part of leading world development analysts and
practitioners, and are still relevant to resolving current agrarian injustice
and rural development problems. The principles might be merged with the recent
work on sustainable development in relation to equity, together with the results
of the work of both the 1992 International Conference on Nutrition and the 1995
World Summit for Social Development.
FAO and the young
researchers who attended the Rural Development International Workshop might
consider lobbying for a greater emphasis on poverty reduction and the protection
of the poor in the design and implementation of structural adjustment and
stabilization policies, as an extension of what the United Nations Children's
Fund (UNICEF) did in 1987 as part of its Adjustment with a Human Face thrust.
The lobby and the debate would be strengthened by the active involvement of
non-governmental organizations (NGOs).
The broader debate
should include both the moral dimension (with regard to injustice and caring for
the poor) and the time factor, i.e. it should combine the arguments for rapid
and sustainable agricultural growth with the time required to reduce quickly
existing absolute poverty levels and the numbers of poor landless waged workers
in agriculture. FAO - having been mandated by the international community to
take the leading role both in nutrition and in agrarian reform and rural
development - is in the best position to provide the guidance and assistance
needed to meet this challenge.
1 This article was prepared for the Rural Development International Workshop, held by the Rural Development Division of FAO in Godollo, Hungary, 9 to 13 April 1996.
2The undernutrition and poverty estimates for post-war Iraq were made, in 1991, by Dreze and Gazdar of the Harvard International Team and, in 1993, by a FAO mission.
3Details of the changes made to the post-Shah agrarian system are taken from Lahsaeizadeh, 1988; and Majd, 1987.
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