Mr. Minister: You answered the question by repeating the question

By Fekade Shewakena

May 10, 2006

I first commend you for availing yourself to the public to answer questions regarding the performance of the Ethiopian economy. What else is more important for Ethiopians to talk about and know more? Interestingly, someone asked you a question to confirm or deny the validity of points I raised on an article I wrote on Ethiomedia.com a week earlier. While I am happy to learn that you read my article, I must tell you that I was a little disappointed by your response. Like all other officials including the Prime Minister himself, you have made the mistake of assuming that we, your subjects, living outside your heavily guarded cocoons are dummies. Without further ado let’s go to the question and your answer and show you what you did.

Here was Mr. or Mrs. B. Kassayie’s question:

Thanks for the opportunity. In an article ‘The statistics and the Ethiopian economy: Where is the beef?’ Fekade Shewakena disputes the reported economic growth and prospects in Ethiopia. He quotes a publication of one Marie-Anne Valvor (Valfort) to demonstrate a discriminatory distribution of central government budget and foreign loan/aid in 2001. The publication was not referenced. I will appreciate if you can clarify these matters and provide serious data or link where these can be accessed.

Regards,
B. Kassayie

Here is your answer followed by a 1998 data about the regional distribution what you referred to as “block grants”:

Again I am not aware of the publication by Marie-Ann. But I have seen the aforementioned article. There are two issues to be raised; firstly the contesting data on the economic performance, secondly the grant formula of the regions. Dealing with the first issue, let us not forget that there are international institutions that compile, verify and finally publish the economic data of member countries. I would encourage those who are interested to see the publications of such institutions (IMF, WB the UN and others). The second issue is concerned with the block grant of regions. The grant formula is approved by the House of Federations, which entitles each and every region to have its respective share that is calculated taking into account their respective population size, level of development and revenue mobilization effort. It is on this rule of calculation that the EFY 1998 budget was allocated. However, as you can see there are 9 regions and 2 city Administrations (Addis Ababa and Dire Dawa) but not 4 as mentioned in the article. It is very important not to forget other regions when we come to discussion. (See table attached by the minister here. )

First, your answer has very little to do with the question. Nobody has suggested that there was no growth in the economy in the period we are talking about. The issue was whatever the growth that occurred, particularly in the agricultural sector was not due to good weather conditions than any innovative policy measures on your government’s part. By the way, reports from other African counties do also show there is a considerable growth in many countries exceeding 4%. In other words, there was nothing unique in Ethiopia nor was anything attributable to your policies. Secondly, the contesting view was whether the orchestrated talk-up of the economy and particularly your planting stories in foreigners’ mouths and then reporting it back as the original source makes all your data suspicious. As to your reference to the “lords of poverty”, the WB and the IMF for testimony, they are not even speaking your figures nor are they telling us that any of the growth is due to your policies. More importantly, the person who raised the question has also asked you to respond to whether the discriminatory distribution that I noted in the article was real or not.

Your answer was to give us a table of “block grants” going to the states in absolute birr and play one of those number games you often play to hoodwink lay people. The question raised was about the per capita share of the states not the absolute dollars. If I give $100 to five people and another $1000 to 1000 people you can tell me that the group with 1000 people has got more dollars in block amount. This is true but when you personalize it, as all economics should be, they have got one dollar each. The five people who got 100 dollars got ten times less in block amount, 10% of the total, but they got 20 dollars each. Now Mr. Minister, tell me which group you want to belong to. You are less than candid in your responses, because inequality is not measured by gross figures. You foolishly tried to imply here that the group of 1000 people is better of than the other group. I took liberty to use your own data for FY1998 and did some elementary math to show you again that the per capita pattern is persistently the same as shown in my article. Here is what you own data looks like when computed in per capita terms for the four major regions we identified earlier in my article. I can’t understand why you insisted to include the other regions too, as if they would change the pattern. I see no reason to avoid comparing the four major ethnic regions only in a category. What is unreasonable in this? I simply took the absolute amount of Birr you gave us and divided it by the total population of the states. I believe you are an economist and I am sure you know that we plan for people not for empty geographic spaces. Am I wrong, Sir?

That is why the per capita, despite its shortcomings, is a better measure than the absolute figures you wanted to play with. As a non-economist I feel ashamed to dare tell you this. Here is how your figures look after the simple computations.

Here is what I compiled in the previous article from Marie Anne’s analysis. I am reprinting it here to help you appreciate how your figures are not different from a persisting pattern of discrimination to which the person who asked you the question was actually referring to. Sir that is why I said you answered the question by repeating the question. You were asked to explain the pattern in the data and you gave us another set of data that proves the same pattern that we want explanation for.

Source of Data: Election in Ethiopia (Ethiomedia.com)

The only pattern I know of such kinds of inequality is in counties where there are colonial relationships, not in a country where the everyday drumbeat is about how nationalities have become equal. Even Menilik, the person your government often accuse of failing to introduce the internet, did not develop such an elaborate and systematic trick to skew everything toward Ankober. At a minimum he was honest in what he did.

I want to clear one point here. This is by no means an argument to say that the people of Tigrai are the beneficiaries of such a program. I only wish they have benefited. The other data I see do not show me that the people of Tigrai are any better off than the rest of their countrymen. The number of people living below the poverty line is not different in Tigrai from the rest of the country. The people of Tigrai do not look like the statistics to me. My suspicion is that the ruling elite is stocking up in its kitchens in Tigrai. I suspect there is something fishy going on here that Your Excellency does not know or try to cover up or afraid to tell us. The reference to Marie Anne Valfort’s 61 page detailed study entitled “Ethical Altruistic Voting in a Multiethnic Country: Evidence from Ethiopia” is here.

Fekade Shewakena may be reached for comments at [email protected]

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Where is the beef?