> -Agree with you.
How Brazil agreed to give up nuclear weapons programme and sign the NPT?
>> If we consider a longer perspective, South East Asia can be seen to have
> >achieved a great reduction in poverty.
>
> -Not to mention South Korea and Taiwan. But those countries still followed
> -protecionist policies. When they started to open their markets, there
> -was a dramatic crisis, and the largest country of Southeast Asia had
> -a serious crisis who probably make them lost a significant portion of
> -previous gains.
Yes. But GDP growth rates for Indonesia (7%, 6.1% and 5.8%), Malaysia (7.4%, 5.3% and 7.7%), Thailand (7.3%, 7.6% and 7.4%) during periods 1965-1980,1980-90 and 1990-98 respectively are impressive. We can add Vietnam to this list.
> How is your current account
> -situation. How much of your industry is owned by state and foreign
> enterprises?
This year's trade surplus with the US will be about $10bn. Exports to the US have grown rapidly in the 1990s, while imports are stagnant. But trade with EU and Japan is in deficit. The current account situation overall is comfortable, since invisibles like software exports, remittances from Indians working abroad add to FX inflows. Foreign Exchange reserves grown from $50bn to $70bn in 2002.
Railways,airlines are state owned. The state enterprises are still significant in telecom, banking, insurance and steel. MNCs' market capitalisation would be about 25% of the total marketcap of top 200 listed corporates.
> -From 1994-2001 we had foreign investment near to 4-7% of our GDP (this
will
> -give something like 20-35% of our overall investment). Many of those
> -investment was in fact related to privatization (ie, it didn´t increase
> -productive capacity)
Privatised state owned companies have been sold to domestic businesses in our case.
> -In the middle-late 90´s the states started to offer tax exemptions to
> -attract foreign enterprises (mainly automobile industries). In some cases
> -the amount of subsidies offered reached US$250 million for only one plant
> -(this agreement was after cancelled by the worker´s party after they won
> -the elections in Rio Grande do Sul state, so the FEDERAL government
>offered> -Ford US$500million in subsidies plus tax exemptions to move the
plant to> -another state). This policy was devastating for my country, since
we have
> -bankrupt states and a auto industry with 50% of productive capacity
unused.
Why auto industry works with 50% unused capacity?
> -But capitalism with relative autonomy is possible.
Yes, it should be possible for large countries such as Brazil and Indonesia. With the emergence of regional trade blocks like ASEAN, there will some loss of sovereignty.
> tA reason for the failure
> of
> -both socialism and third world nationalism is the lack of international
> -cooperation among countries who followed those paths.
What are the prospects of mercosur trade block that is being talked about?
Ulhas