The IMF’s “Poison” Could Be Your “Meat”

Beneath the face-value helps offered by external creditors to poor countries are conditions that free and make governments look good (seemingly), but tighten the noose around the masses of loan-recipient countries.

Governments may enter such discipline-inducing deals to solve issues related to the macroeconomy. Yet, objective critics, while opining on the efficient use of “rented” resources, have been brutally-frontal in calling such deals “killer poisons” hidden under palliatives.

Conditions that do not bode well for the ordinary people include, the freeze on employment in the public sector, increased taxation, and withdrawal of government subsidies. What do you do when your hands are tied? The government cannot spiral out the external prescriptions, and the innocent populace cannot change the measures wrapped around it either.

It is interesting why governments do not clamour or campaign for population controls. It is the people who bear the brunt so they ought to be sensitized to take the first option by keeping smaller family sizes as the global financial system imposes tighter measures. The reason is that, over the years, job opportunities have moved at a snail’s pace as compared to population growth.

In the face of resource regimentation or the inability to grow national wealth, vis-à-vis the population, it is all too clear the latter is poorer amidst a décliné in Per Capita incomes. The crystal ball now looks anything from translucent to opaqueness depending on where you are and which conditions are coming in. This only suggests a dimmed outlook for everybody within the territories that are hit by the multilateral meteorite.

For the individual who is jobless, and wants to wriggle out of the impositions, it is high time you start doing something of your own. The options for self-employment are many. You have to venture into areas of production and commerce where demand is inelastic. The food and water business is a minefield that would insure you against the shocks because people cannot live without food and water. Another investment that won’t go to waste is the provision of public places of convenience. Their use is intrinsic to rational living things, in which case humans are the main focus.

It is of great essence people go into agricultural farming. Large swathes of arable lands lie fallow and the cultivable lands when optimally utilized are set to yield immeasurable dividends. Backyard gardening, subsistence, and light commercial farming are assisted by sector-specific donor agencies working with national governments, with the sole aim to raise the living standards of smallholder farmers. Again, animal husbandry could be part of the agricultural inclination. You can rear goats, grass cutters, rabbits, poultry, and pigs.

Out of these are possibilities and value-chain earnings. The offshoots seem endless. It goes like this, starting a bar to sell goat pepper soap or grass cutter light soup or operating a barbecue joint. You can also sell the livestock to local eateries or dressed meats to large restaurants and shopping malls, subject to safety standards and hygienic tests.

Similarly, you can position yourself to supply fresh food crops to these commercial outlets, including hotels and institutions that run their own cafeterias. Your market is enlarging as you take things seriously. Soon the option appears on the table whether to supply diplomatic missions and others.

There are research institutions that can help you to diversify your products and to add value to them while guiding you to market opportunities. Cassava flour, bakeries with potato concentration, and the formulation of fruit juices are some derivatives. You may also specialize in preparing animal feed, from your barn. This holds a considerable potential for profit gain in the face of imports that are priced out of the means of prospectors and scarcities in the local markets. These put together, a supplier may consider exports to neighboring countries, unless there is a law that leashes that effort.

Dire situations that are created by the interplays within the international system, also call for communities within affected countries to come together to form cooperatives, so they become identifiable to secure donor funding to embark on productive and commercial ventures.

Households and marriages must be well-knit, even in the face of adversity. Wives are malleable to certain roles that position them to play complementary roles to their husbands. A husband who runs amok philandering is not helping anybody, soon he would himself go to the gallows he prepared out of his folly. The IMF presents tough conditions but it is also the time to think outside the box to do something new.