International Trade

Global Risk Rises

February 2007
Paul Melly, International Trade Today

On almost every continent, politics has conspired to produce awkward surprises that have made life more complex for British exporters and the banks and insurers that support their activities.

In Venezuela, Bolivia and Ecuador voters have elected governments with a nationalist radical economic agenda. Bolivian president Evo Morales has reasserted government control over the gas sector and now plans to take a similarly assertive line on mining.

Meanwhile, Poland’s idiosyncratic conservative president Lech Kaczynski nominated Slawomir Skrzypek, a former top aide with only 14 months banking experience, to be governor of the central bank.

And in Nigeria, as politics entered the heated pre-electoral period, President Olusegun Obasanjo reshuffled his internationally respected finance minister Ngozi Ikonjo-Iweala, who had played a crucial role in restoring the country’s economic credibility.

Scandal has tinged the standing of South Africa’s African National Congress ruling elite – as in almost any long-serving government. Russia has resorted to the bluntest of diplomatic weapons in its disputes over gas pricing with Ukraine and Belarus.

The Middle East is in arguably its most dangerous condition for decades; and European attempts to ‘constructively engage’ with Iran are now hobbled by the nuclear dispute and the incendiary verbal sallies of President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.

Algeria has advanced and retreated on the liberalisation of oil development. Even in south-east Asia, generally seen as a byword for emerging market stability, Thailand has experienced a military coup and a bombing.

Comforting notions of a world gradually moving towards an almost universal system of market economics and moderate or democratic government have been shown up as too simplistic and inadequate to describe today’s realities. While there is little sign of old-style socialist central management making a comeback, individual governments often feel the need to take... continued on page two >

 

 

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