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Ivory Coast
Index
In addition to its planning role, the government was
the
largest single investor in the economy. Following
independence, the
government embarked on an ambitious capital spending
program. Much
of the capital for government intervention came from the
CSSPPA,
which fixed producer prices, operated a reserve price
stabilization
fund, and extracted profits for the state. Much of this
investment
went toward developing infrastructure and was one of the
state's
more positive economic contributions in the 1960s.
By the 1970s, although there was no official change of
economic
policy, the state intervened more directly in the economy,
primarily through the creation of parastatals. This surge
in the
number of parastatals reflected the government's desire to
stimulate growth in those areas where the private sector
was
considered insufficiently active, to create employment for
Ivoirians, and to encourage Ivoirians to invest locally.
In the
case of agricultural parastatals, the state wanted to
lessen income
disparities between the north and the south, decrease food
imports,
provide rural employment, and diminish the importance of
foreign
investment in agriculture. In some instances, social or
political
objectives superseded the profit motive, as appears to
have been
the case with parastatals like the Bandama Valley
Authority
(Autorité du Vallée du Bandama--AVB), which promoted
regional
development, and the Sugar Development Company (Société de
Développement Sucrier--SODESUCRE), which was also
responsible for
creating jobs and building schools and medical clinics in
the
savanna region.
All of the parastatals enjoyed relative financial
autonomy,
although their technical and financial operations were in
theory
supervised by the government. In fact, there was often
little
supervision by, or coordination of activities with, other
government agencies, perhaps reflecting the fact that
top-level
managers of some parastatals were often politically well
connected.
In many instances, the parastatals withheld or otherwise
could not
produce crucial financial data for planners. Given the
absence of
governmental oversight and the sometimes vague social and
political
objectives of the parastatals, they performed badly and in
some
cases--notably the housing sector--were rife with fraud.
In spite of these shortcomings--or perhaps because of
them--the
government support of parastatals steadily increased. By
1974 it
amounted to more than half of the entire investment
budget. Over
the same fourteen years, the proportion of investment
spending
covered by net public savings fell to 37 percent. This
imbalance
forced the government to borrow extensively from foreign
sources to
maintain an even level of investment and growth. Between
1965 and
1975, foreign loans rose from 41 percent to 65 percent of
investment in parastatals. Moreover, the outstanding debt
figures
of the public enterprises and the amount of foreign
borrowing,
which in theory should have been cleared by the National
Amortization Fund (Caisse Autonome d'Amortissement--CAA),
were not
disclosed until an end-of-year report. This process
effectively
precluded government attempts to control parastatal
finances.
Data as of November 1988
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