What economic fortunes might 2017 hold in store for various countries? Of course, if credibility matters, predictions cannot be made for their own sake: the anchor for the projections below, however, can be found in a study of trends and present investments affecting growth-rate data by the International Monetary Fund (IMF). These are rarely picture-perfect predictions, but that they do not stray far from real-life outcomes gives them sufficient weight, on top of which, they permit comparisons of a kind difficult to pursue with other data-sets.
Accordingly, from the near 200 countries listed, seven had negative growth, with Belarus having the least among them and South Sudan's -6 per cent representing the most. In between were Puerto Rico, Zimbabwe, Ecuador, Venezuela, and Equatorial Guinea in ascending order of negative growth. At the other end of the entire spectrum, only two countries are expected to post double-digit growth, surprisingly Libya at the head of the pack with over 14 per cent, followed by equally surprisingly Yemen with slightly under 13 per cent: that both are, and have been, conflict zones, explains why the "surprise" adjective. Particularly at a time when primary products have been taking a beating in the commodity markets, that is, indeed, startling. For instance, Libya, a key oil-exporter, could not have been there just for oil: among the traditional oil-exporting giants, Libya apart, Iran leads the list with better than a 4.0 per cent growth rate, while Saudi Arabia is near the basement of that group with under 2 .0 per cent (although Nigeria's 1.0 per cent poses a source of greater concern). Besides, oil-price plummets for over one-year do not make this commodity the catalyst of any significant growth anywhere in the oil-exporting world.
If oil is unlikely to be a 2017 economic driver, nor too will socialism, of whatever stripe, and communism: top socialist countries, Ecuador and Venezuela, expect negative growth, while Cuba and North Korea, though not on the list, are also doing so spectacularly as to grab growth headlines. More dramatic is a very telling inversion of past patterns: countries hitherto labelled "developed" continue to dominate, but this time only the lower tiers. That is correct, the lowest tiers have suddenly opened up to "developed" countries more than "less developed" ones, while those hitherto labelled "less developed" similarly flock into the upper echelons.
Japan, the world's third largest economy, will in all likelihood have the 12th lowest growth rate, barely struggling to post even a positive score (it may scramble to about 1.0 per cent), while the largest economy itself, the United States, has the 52nd worst figure of barely 2.0 per cent. In between these two industrial superpowers lies China, with the 17th highest growth rate, of just over 6.0 per cent. Below the US growth rate lie other developed countries, mostly European. From the highest growth rate in this category to the lowest, these include: Croatia and Spain tip-toeing the US rate, to Slovenia, the Netherlands, Denmark, Germany, Belgium, France, Sweden, Norway, San Monaco, Austria, and Finland registering just over 1.0 per cent, before the under-1.0 per cent group consists of Portugal, the United Kingdom, Switzerland, and Italy. One clearly sees Britain poised to pay the Brexit price. As a matter of fact, of the lowest 50 ranked countries, 13 just happen to be developed European countries. Other non-European developed countries fare just as poorly: Canada with the 43rd lowest, Australia 72nd, and New Zealand 76th. As the other developed countries badly (and sadly) slip out of the driver's seat among the 200-odd countries on that list, the highest-ranked European countries in the top-125 growth-rate list have been mostly transitional countries. In order of ranking, these include Ireland at 71st, with under 5.0 per cent at the top, followed by Albania at 75th, Montenegro at 77th, Macedonia at 80th, Latvia at 84th, Poland 85th, Malta 86th, Kosovo 88th, Slovakia 89th, Ireland 95th, Bosnia-Herzegovina 96th, Luxembourg 97th, Moldova 99th, Lithuania 100th, Turkey 101st, Bulgaria 106th, Serbia 107th, Greece 109th, Czech Republic 11th, Sweden 116th, and Estonia 122nd, with Hungary 125th rounding off the nadir, registering just a 2.0 per cent growth rate. That these mostly once-scarred countries lead the great historical powers of West Europe may come across as imagination more than reality, but if ever there was a case of facts speaking stranger than fiction, this pattern must surely be one of them.
Which countries, then, are the catalysts, and what can be deduced from their situations as to where or what the economic drivers are or may be?
Between Libya, the leader, and China, boasting the 17th highest growth rate, the following countries demand attention. In ranking order, they are: Yemen (just under 13 per cent), Ivory Coast, Myanmar, India, Ethiopia, Ghana, Laos, Tanzania, Djibouti, Cambodia, Bangladesh, Senegal, Philippines, Bhutan, and Vietnam, all above 6.0 per cent. Just to keep a perspective, the countries just behind China, in ranking order, include Kenya, Rwanda, Uzbekistan, Burkina Faso, Panama, Uganda, Mozambique, East Timor, Central African Republic, Benin, Turkmenistan, Indonesia, and Namibia. Again, not a single "developed" country in a list dominated by that continent wherefrom migrant boatloads still capsize every year with atrociously unacceptable human fatalities: Africa.
Once upon a time such a growth-rate list as 2017's would read like a tabulation of countries worst hit by malnutrition, in need of maximum foreign aid, and as playgrounds of the bulk of humanitarian operations. Reiterating how Asia, particularly from the South and South-east, though Central should not be ruled out, as well as Africa, have become the pace-setters, should not obscure us to two paradoxical trends: next year's figures will not be an exception, since many of the countries on these continents have been on a roll, albeit unevenly, for some time; and that their economies still remain fragile from both dependence upon developed country markets/investments and less-developed-country political instability.
One Latin country, Panama, joins that auspicious Africa-Asia growth-rate list, and whose 6+ per cent growth rate is likely to be three times as large as Argentina's, twelve-times as large as Brazil's, and about four times as large as both Chile's and Mexico's. In other words, the traditional Latin heavy-setters have also had to yield their places.
Yet, the sun is expected to paradoxically shine largely more upon Africa's and Asia's southern rim than elsewhere. True many countries, especially in Africa, have benefited from commodity-exports, but at a time of a slowdown in this sector, development and industrialization indicators seem to be getting more sonorous; while others, mostly in Asia, have been, or will be, riding the low-wage production wave, traditionally led by Bangladesh, but now finding competition from Myanmar, Vietnam, and Laos, in that pecking order, among others. They increasingly supply the markets that depressed developed economies struggle to muster, and with their monetary harvests being channelled into arenas once dominated by developed countries, they may be giving the south-south partnership trajectory more meaning than in the "New International Economic Order" era of the 1970s, after the mind-boggling oil-price quadrupling. Africa-Latin and Asia-Latin axes happen to be far too ripe to not pluck.
At a time of depressed western performances and nothing too startling about multilateral initiatives, especially in lending, one must turn to other developmental drivers. Though the IMF statistics do not show so, anecdotal evidence suggests China's trillion-dollar trade-surpluses stock, accumulated almost entirely from developed countries, lies partly behind this restructured order: in the 'One Belt, One Road' name, huge amounts have been allocated, for example, for infrastructural development in other "southern" countries. They maybe about to pay dividends since many projects, such as ports in Myanmar, Pakistan, and Sri Lanka, among others, approach completion, while highways spanning South-east and South Asia also open up far-flung arenas for neo-liberal development. In turn, the growth of Asian markets, as in China and India, further feeds that restructuration by increasingly diverting trade that may have gone to developed countries. For instance, a more concerted Chinese drive to substitute its own world-leading ready-made garment (RMG) industry with RMG exports of Bangladesh and other South-east Asian countries, would rattle the global textile industry: China may convert its diminishing competitiveness in this sector into diversifying/uplifting its productive capacities elsewhere, while also opening a second generation of trading networks now that the commodity-sector boom has climaxed.
Look forward, in the coming weeks of 2017, for this "Scopus" column in this newspaper to coax more from the tectonic global changes unfolding.
Dr. Imtiaz A. Hussain is Professor & Head of the newly-built Department of Global Studies & Governance at Independent University, Bangladesh.
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