Dear Colleagues, As it was tacitly touched upon in our recent focused discussion and is a hot topic for WSIS-2005, I would be interested in other opinions.
To state it: in many cases they should not!...and not for the sake of avoiding spending but rather to avoid harming the "Developing" Countries. Why? Investing in and operating ICT-infrastructure takes money. This money may be spent in 3 different ways: (a) Paying for equipment (or reducing it's price) to be donated (b) Subsidizing material Operation-costs (like communication lines, energy etc.) (c) Paying local personnel totally or partially Let's see now position by position: (a) Actually the money goes to vendors of equipment, not to beneficiaries (i.e. it gives access to a market where otherwise there would be no access). Moreover -due to the high operation-costs- in many cases recipients of these "donations" find themselves either obliged to spend where otherwise they would not have spent a cent or simply not use the "donated" equipment. (b) Specifically if we talk about subsidizing communication costs, the money again goes to the big players not the beneficiaries. Again it opens a market that otherwise would not be accessible. Additionally in many, many countries local communication costs are artificially inflated by a monopoly situation or by the fact that local Telco's have to feed so many "interested" parties -from corrupt executives to corrupt politicians- that the TELCO-business is closer to Mafia-racketeering than to an honest business. Foreign money would allow them to perpetuate this situation. (c) Even though theoretically possible, this one is the least common option I've seen...and comes with the risk that the hired personnel looks after the interests of their employers rather than the needs of those whom they supposedly serve. There are "arguments" that without subsidies many poor could not afford ICT-services or would not use them as being too expensive compared with other options. Well, these seem to me similar to the "arguments" that by subsidizing agro-exports below production-costs (Milk, Grains, Rice, Sugar, etc.) the big ones -USA, European Union, others- "help" the poor to get fed...yet we all know that in practice this dumping destroys local economies and does not help develop them. Corollary: Unless it can be shown beforehand that by using ICT-services people are truly better off or that a specific development-objective cannot be obtained by other more efficient (without subsidies!) and effective means, subsidies have a tendency to deepen and not to correct distortions. Yours sincerely, Cornelio ------------ ***GKD is solely supported by EDC, a Non-Profit Organization*** To post a message, send it to: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> To subscribe or unsubscribe, send a message to: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>. In the 1st line of the message type: subscribe gkd OR type: unsubscribe gkd Archives of previous GKD messages can be found at: <http://www.edc.org/GLG/gkd/>
