Bahati Modeste, Executive Director, SOCICO

How to Monitor and Track the Impact Trade Has in Our Countries

First of all, it appears imperative to me to underline the importance of trade in the development and in the economic growth of a country.

I will deal only with two aspects of trade to demonstrate this importance. Afterwards, I’ll give my views on the role that Civil Society Organizations should play so as to ascertain progressively healthy, fair and honest trade practices.

In mentioning this last aspect, I’m sure that some members of this respectable assembly must be quite skeptical. But I think that it is still possible to change for the better when following the well-coordinated actions of Civil Society framework, which functions as an international network. Trade which results in grossly exaggerated profits without properly respecting consumers’ and producers’ rights or even international standards must be avoided.

Let us not forget, dear friends, that our primary mission is to defend human rights, to fight for the improvement in the quality of life of our populations, to fight against poverty, to support peace, democracy, sustainable development and health for all, to look after the respect of the rights of social and professional organizations, to maintain a healthy environment, to fight for gender equality and for the integration of the youth in the management process of government to promote good political and economic governance.

The two aspects of trade, which I’ll deal with, are the following:

  • Internal commerce, and
  • International commerce

What characterizes commerce in our developing countries is that the raw materials we produce is essentially aimed towards servicing industries form the north or from former colonizing nations.

A fair and loyal business concept would ascertain that the producer sets the selling price of his products so he knows the costs of production, the paying out or offset capital and sustainable investments.

The reality is unfortunately otherwise as in opposition to the industries from the North which fix themselves the selling price of their finished products, the buying price of our raw materials is fixed by the buyers. This is indeed a tragedy.

This is valid as much as for the Democratic Republic of Congo as for other developing countries.

To this, one may add the unethical behavior of most economic operators who fix themselves exaggerated margins of profit but also high costs of services and basic necessities such as transport, telephone, water, electricity, generic drugs and so on.

I think that Civil Society cannot keep quiet under such conditions and must exert adequate pressure so as to convince policy makers to bring about a price scale, which shall be near costs of production without hindering liberal economic policies.

On the international front, the situation is even worse due to the difficulties sustained in foreign exchange payment, which foreign exchange can only be procured through the price scales imposed on us by the constant fluctuation in exchange rates generally to our disadvantage.

This dark pictures of the internal and external trade concepts of our countries shows that despite efforts on the part of one and all in order to set our countries on the way to development and economic growth, poverty will continue to afflict our populations.

WE have to be honest and say that our trade situations not the single factor contributing to poverty. Considering the Democratic Republic of Congo, poor political and economic governance principles and the absence of democracy during several years are also important causes of our social degradation. Otherwise, how to explaining the low income of Congolese population despite the fact that the country has fabulous natural resources including mining, energy, hydro-electricity, forestry, agriculture, human capital and petroleum over an area of 2.5 million sq km under excellent climatic conditions.

The Congolese Civil Society has, since 1990, decided to get involved in politics by querying all political leaders and proposing a new political order while maintaining it’s traditional activities. Already, we notice an improvement in our quality of life. The other actors of African Civil Society should follow suit, if they haven’t done so yet.

Monitoring and Evaluation of the Trade Impact by Civil Society

As the economy controls both politics and social affairs, I think that a window of opportunity has just been given to us by the US – especially through AGOA and its’ new customs regulations and facilitating mechanisms. Once more, Civil Society must seize this opportunity to get involved in the trade sector so as to render it more healthy, loyal and fair to the advantage of our populations.

To this end, Civil Society must be better organized both at national and international levels so as to influence the impact of trade in our countries to the advantage of our consumer societies.

Civil Society must also establish a communication network to facilitate exchanges between African and American economic operators.

In its structures, Civil Society must implement a system of communication so as to enable its members and citizens to operate positively in matters pertaining to consumption, savings and investments.

At the level of the Secretariat of the AGOA Civil Society Network and starting from the Unit of Civil Society at the African Union (of the ECOSOCC and of each member State), a monitoring cell must be added to report annually on the impact of trade in general and particularly under AGOA.

This report shall be sent at the disposal of all Civil Society Organizations, of business chambers of commerce in Africa and America, of the US Government, of our respective governments, of NEPAD and of the Economic Social and Cultural Council (ECOSOCC) of the African Union.