Hace unas semanas
se presentó, con bombos y platillos, un megaplan para transformar la economía
(y, en parte, la sociedad) de Arabia Saudita en los próximos 15 años. El plan
prevé la declinación tanto en los precios como en la producción de petróleo, y
pretende dotar al país de medios alternativos de desarrollo. No todos creen que
se trata de un buen plan. Para algunos, de hecho, será un desastre. La nota que
sigue es de Alastair Crooke, ex diplomático británico y actual director del
sito web Conflicts Forum. Fue publicada anteayer en el Club Valdai
(valdaiclub.com):
Título: Vision
2030: Saudi’s ‘Great Leap Forward’
Texto: Saudi Arabia
clearly needs change. Its present economic model simply is unsustainable in the
wake of the collapse in the oil price, and with a young leader in control, who
has, at least until now, bet the Saudi treasury, double-or-quits, on wars in
Syria and Yemen, and in extravagant foreign policy gestures (Egypt, Lebanon,
Iraq and Libya). And now, predictably, the western consultants, McKinsey, have
been called in to rescue the kingdom from the enveloping crisis.
“The most
striking – and ominous – precedent”, author and Middle Eastern commentator,
Patrick Cockburn, foresees for Mohammed Bin Salman’s economic ‘leap forward’,
Vision 2030, is “not Mao or Saddam, but the Shah of Iran, in the five years
before the revolution in 1979”. Using Iran’s oil revenues, and urged on by well
intentioned western ‘development thinking’, Cockburn writes, the Shah “proposed
in 1974 for Iran’s economy to grow by a quarter every year, under an expanded
version of the Fifth Five Year Development Plan. The outcome of the Shah’s
manic desire for growth and modernisation was destabilisation and popular rage
that contributed significantly to his overthrow”. He continues: “At the heart
of the Shah’s downfall was ill-informed hubris and wishful thinking which led
him to saw through the branch on which he was sitting”. And that already
stressed and bowing branch rested – in Iran - on the quiescence of the clerics
and the Bazaaris, whose patience and willingness to bear the weight, snapped.
In the Shah’s
time, the well-intentioned western advice was all about development, regional
co-operation and industrialisation. Today’s neo-liberalism is couched in terms
such as privatisation, monetisation of fixed assets, debt-driven growth,
competitiveness and financialisation. It is different admittedly, from the
earlier Iranian formula, but it may prove no less toxic to the brittle twin pillars
on which the Saudi monarchy rests - quiescent clerics, and a majority of young
Saudi males (70%), used to idling away their time in the public sector
bureaucracy, whilst being handsomely paid for doing nothing. The question is,
whether McKinsey – for all the best of intentions naturally - has similarly
handed Mohammad Salman the very ‘saw’ (Vision 2030), by which he will sever the
branch on which the Saudi monarchy is perched?
Professor Vijay
Prashad suggests that “this report [Vision 2030], could have been written
without a site visit. It carries all the clichés of neo-liberalism: transform
the economy from a government-led to a market-led one, cut subsidies and
transfer payments, and sell government assets to finance the transition. There
is not one hint of the peculiar political economy and cultural context of Saudi
Arabia. The report calls for a cut in Saudi Arabia’s public-sector employment
and a cut in its three million low-wage foreign workers. But the entire
political economy of Saudi Arabia and the culture of its Saudi subjects are
reliant upon state employment for the subjects, and low-wage subservience from
the guest workers. To change these two pillars calls into question the survival
of the monarchy.”
Salem Saif notes
that McKinsey has made its mark in the Gulf states, producing 'economic
visions' for each country. “These master plans present countries with a
blueprint to transform their entire economies, promising to move them from oil
dependency to rich, “diversified,” “knowledge-based” economies… The testing
ground for McKinsey’s “economic vision” business line was the Kingdom of
Bahrain. There the company teamed up with the young and “ambitious” Crown
Prince in the mid-2000s to draw up the “Economic Vision 2030” — a plan to reform
Bahrain into a “competitive” society. Oil-rich Abu Dhabi, the capital of the
United Arab Emirates, was next in line for its own Economic Vision 2030.”
If these
‘economic visions’ sound remarkably similar, it is probably because they are
(Saif argues): “diversify the economy away from oil dependency, and grow the
economy by transforming it into a financial, logistical, and tourist hub. In
essence, become Dubai, in one form or another. Saif continues:
“And the route to
success is always through the private sector. In the same interview announcing
the Aramco privatization, the deputy crown prince outlined plans to privatize
public infrastructure, education, and even health care.
The infatuation
with privatization is particularly bizarre in the Gulf. Here the private sector
is mainly composed of “family-owned” companies in construction, retail, and
hospitality that are subsidy-dependent, plagued by low productivity, and
heavily reliant on exploited, poorly paid migrant labour who produce
non-exportable services.
In contrast,
state-associated companies in the Gulf, whether partially or wholly owned by
the government, tend to be more dynamic, productive, and technologically savvy.
They have (relatively) better labour relations and hire more local workers. And
whether involved in oil, logistics, air travel, or sovereign wealth management,
they’re among the most internationally recognized companies the region has to
offer.
A common thread
in all these economic visions — whether developmentalist or neoliberal — is the
near-total absence of participation by citizens themselves. This is not unusual
for the Gulf states.
The region’s
people suffer a double form of disdain: their autocratic rulers consider them
unworthy of playing any role in decision-making, and many around the world,
including ‘progressives’, tend to write them off as denizens of oppressive rich
states. Rarely are they granted any agency.”
What Saudi Arabia
does share with Iran of the era of the Shah is a lack of any structures to absorb
and to channel the sometimes explosive social and political impulses that
radical and hurried change can generate. And, to put it bluntly, (per critic
Selvam Canagaratna) Mohammad Bin Salman’s “ultimate aim is to put an end to the
long-standing social contract under which Saudi nationals get easy jobs in the
government sector and a high standard of living, in return for political
passivity and loyalty to the House of Saud.”
This political
passivity can too easily be taken for granted. In his book Western Political
Dominance and Political Islam, Kalid Sayeed, writes how the Shah had become
entirely oblivious to the enormous hardships his economic policies of rapid
industrialisation had created for Iranians – this blindness represented the
“the ill-informed hubris and wishful thinking” to which the Shah had succumbed.
70% of the
Saudi-born workforce is in comfortable, un-demanding jobs in the state
bureaucracy. Will they welcome the metamorphosis to ‘competitiveness’? Bin
Salman has big plans to privatize public infrastructure, education, and even
health care. Will the Wahhabi establishment welcome this modernisation and
westernisation of their society? (King Abdul Aziz faced rebellion, King Saud
faced being ousted, and King Faisal was assassinated (1975), precisely because
of their western modernisation proclivities).
Today, the young
Saudi ‘subject’ is increasingly well-educated – and increasingly online. The
country has the highest number of active Twitter users in the Arab world: 2.4
million, or more than double the number in Egypt, a country whose population is
three times larger.
Professor Prashad
concludes:
“To shift from an
oil-dependent economy to an industrial-tourism-finance economy will require a
massive dose of investment. To secure that investment, Saudi Arabia plans to
sell a small stake of its state-owned oil firm—ARAMCO. The plan is to raise at
least $2 trillion from that sale and from the sale of other state assets. This
money will bolster the depleted Sovereign Wealth Fund, which might otherwise
run dry by 2017-2020.
The enhanced
Sovereign Wealth Fund will be used to develop new industrial sectors such as
petrochemicals, manufacturing at the medium scale and finance as well as
tourism. Foreigners will be allowed to own property in the Kingdom and
entrepreneurial activity will be encouraged by the state. How does all this
happen by 2020 – the date proposed by Prince MbS—or even by 2030—the name of
the Prince’s plan? Will Saudi Arabia be able to rapidly transform its
population from being satisfied with receipts of oil revenues to being workers
in an insecure market environment? History suggests a long period of
dissatisfaction amongst the public during this kind of enormous transition. Can
the Saudi royal family manage the level of anger and humiliation that this
change will evoke?”
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