Chow: Economic freedom is the best path towards sustainable development

DP Leader Paul Chow with party leaders and members of the Democrat Union of Africa (DUA).

“The level of poverty among citizens of a country is a consequence of government policy or lack of it” DP leader Paul Chow has said.

Chow was addressing party leaders and members of the Democrat Union of Africa (DUA), both ruling and opposition parties with centre and centre-right policies, on the occasion of the organisation’s Annual Conference which was held at the Imperial Resort Beach Hotel in Entebbe, Uganda. Addressing the theme of the conference, “Africa since independence – building on our potential” Chow said, “Likewise, prosperity depends entirely on a country’s economic policies which must be politically driven.”

The DP leader said that African countries are generally endowed with all the ingredients for economic development. They have arable land, reliable rain patterns, permanent rivers which flow from the highlands to the sea or lake and well trained manpower. Yet, despite all these attributes and potentials, 65% of Africa’s population survives on less than one dollar a day.

Mr Chow used the example of Singapore to show that a country’s economic prosperity does not depend on availability of natural resources. “If you think Singapore has achieved economic prosperity due to its smaller size, its geographical position on international sea routes and a small population” he told the assemble delegates, “you miss the point. If size was important or access to sea routes, then why haven’t the Comoros islands, Mauritius, Madagascar or Seychelles achieved similar socio- economic progress?”

Chow said that the economic model offered by Hong Kong, another Asian tiger, namely small government and big markets should be a lesson for African leaders of centre and centre-right parties. “Economic freedom is the best path toward sustainable development. This is understood to mean increasing the range of choices open to the people”, he told the assembled delegations at the two day conference.

He said that in the 1960’s Zambians had the same per capita income as the South Koreans. He reminded the delegates that in the 1950’s most of the world’s poor were concentrated in Asia, now they are in Africa. Today Zambia has an even lower per capita income that it had in the sixties, while Korea’s has increased ten-fold. This reversal of fortunes, Chow said, is recognised to have been largely due to the lack of economic freedom in many African countries, while other countries have opened up to the outside world.

“If economic freedom is to advance as in Hong Kong, the first order of business must be to improve the legal system, allow free flow of information and develop an independent judiciary to protect people’s rights and property” Chow said. He added, “Hong Kong teaches us that limited government along with economic freedom is a recipe for prosperity and a humane society”.

The DP was also represented at the Conference by its General Secretary, Georges Bibi.