Transforming an economy isn't easy, but it can be done. When Mao Zedong died in 1976, China was one of the world's most backward and impoverished nations. Gross domestic product per capita, essentially a measure of average income, was about $200 (adjusted for inflation). Two years later, Deng Xiaoping came to power and deregulated the economy. It exploded. Average annual income is now close to $10,000; 850 million people were lifted out of poverty. The transformation was accomplished with astonishing speed. Uche Orji, a former Wall Street investment banker who's now CEO of the Nigeria Sovereign Investment Authority, says he first went to China in 1998. When he went back five years later, it was "pleasantly unrecognizable."
轉變一個經濟體并不容易,但可以做到。1976年毛澤東去世時,中國是世界上最落后、最貧困的國家之一。人均國內生產總值 (本質上是衡量平均收入的指標)約為200美元(經通脹調整后)。兩年后,鄧小平上臺,解除了對經濟的管制。經濟暴漲。平均年收入現在接近1萬美元;8.5億人擺脫貧困。這一轉變以驚人的速度完成。前華爾街投資銀行家、現任尼日利亞主權投資局首席執行官的烏切?奧爾吉稱,他1998年第一次來到中國。五年后,當他再到中國時,發展快到“難以辨認”。
Nigeria's numbers today are surprisingly close to where China's were before reform. In 1978, China's poverty rate was 55 percent, almost identical to the most recent statistics for Nigeria. And adult literacy in China was only 65 percent, comparable to Nigeria's 62 percent. Today, China's poverty rate is almost zero, and literacy is at 97 percent.
尼日利亞今天的數字與改革前的中國驚人地接近。1978年,中國的貧困率為55%,幾乎與尼日利亞最近的統計數據相同。當時中國的成人識字率只有65%,而與之相較尼日利亞僅62%。今天,中國的貧困率幾乎為零,識字率為97%。
If a comparison to China seems too ambitious, how about India? Nigeria and India have more than a few similarities: Both are ex-British colonies and have an extraordinary number of ethnic groups (2,000 in India), endemic corruption, religious conflicts and a loyal and highly educated diaspora. Before 1991, India had a heavily regulated socialist economy, with extreme levels of protectionism for domestic industries and notorious levels of red tape and bureaucracy. Facing default, Prime Minister P.V. Narasimha Rao and Finance Minister Manmohan Singh began a reform program of reducing tariffs, opening the economy to competition and foreign investment, and slashing bureaucracy. GDP per capita rocketed from $368 to $2,010. Between 2014 and 2018, India grew faster than China.
如果與中國相比顯得過于雄心勃勃,那么印度呢?尼日利亞和印度有很多相似之處:它們都是前英國殖民地,有著數量驚人的種族群體(印度有2000個)、腐敗之風、宗教沖突,以及忠誠且受過高等教育的海外僑民。1991年以前,印度的社會主義經濟受到嚴格監管,國內產業保護主義程度極高,繁文縟節和官僚作風臭名昭著。針對違約,總理P.V. 納拉辛哈·拉奧和財政部長曼莫漢·辛格開始了一項降低關稅、向競爭和外國投資開放經濟、削減官僚機構的改革計劃。人均GDP從368美元飆升至2010美元。2014年至2018年間,印度的增長速度超過了中國。
As with China and India, much of the case for Nigeria's potential comes down to one word: size. Large countries have huge advantages over small ones, both in terms of economic efficiency and in their ability to attract investment. It was the potential of China's huge domestic market, not its usefulness as a source of cheap products, that attracted foreign investment in the 1980s. Nigeria is the "last major open market on earth," says Randy Buday, DHL Express' regional director for West and Central Africa.
與中國和印度一樣,尼日利亞的潛力在很大程度上可以歸結為一個詞:規模。大國在經濟效率和吸引投資能力方面都比小國有巨大的優勢。上世紀80年代,吸引外國投資的是中國龐大國內市場的潛力,而非作為廉價產品來源的實用性。尼日利亞是“地球上最后一個主要的開放市場,” 敦豪快遞公司西非和中非地區主管蘭迪?布迪表示。
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