Tuesday, November 3, 2009

Best Minister in Africa and Asia

Youssef Ghali has been chosen as the best minister of finance in Africa and Asia !! Yes this is for real , it is not a joke nor it is April’s fool. It seems that an economic journal called “African Banker” has chosen him as the best minister of finance in Africa and Asia despite it is “African Banker” not “African and Asian Banker” !!

Seriously I do not know on what basis they chose Ghali to be the best minister of Chairman of the International Monetary and Financial Committee and Minister of Finance of Egypt Youssef Boutros-Ghali during the International Monetary and Financial Committee (IMFC) press conference at IMF Headquarters in Washington, DC.  October 11, 2008.  © IMF Staff Photographer/Eugene Salazar
finance in Africa and Asia even in some unknown journal with my all respect to its editors ; we are not speaking here about the Economist for God Sake !!

Look Ghali can claim what ever he wants , he can be happy with that position in IMF which I wonder he got and he could not improve his country’s own economy for God sake !!

7 comments:

  1. I think that the title or Asia should have went for someone in China, Malaysia or Japan or something like that, their economy is clearly much better.

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  2. Hmm I would say that Ghali's results were great, relative to his possibilities.

    By Asia here they probably meant the Middle East thought.

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  3. This is bullshit Ms. Feminist, this man is coming up with unlimited ways to tax us already before he was elected it was very easy to evade / bribe taxes (Real Estate etc.) now it is impossible... also he came up with the New Real Estate Tax that will eat up 10% of every property if it is worth more than 1 Million LE... I think he is doing a great job, but where does the money end up in?

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  4. You've got to give it to the man he's done an amazing job in collecting more money for the gov its not his fault the money we pay does not turn into proper services. And i dnt like him but Im just being fair.

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  5. @Medsha, this is what logic says


    @John,clearly you do not know well the possibilities of this country and that's why you are saying this.In fact you know nothing about this country except it is from the main enemies of Israel so keep it for yourself please.

    @anonymous#1 ,well I am Ms.Feminist !! ok it seems that Tarek Nour's ads in Ramadan paid off ; good for him

    @anonymous#2,well if this is inefficient cabinet why he stays in his position and does not expose them !!?? does not he feel angry that his work is wasted by the corruption in the regime !!?

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  6. Oh well, here we go again! Another Ghali bashing session. From a technical point-of-view, I believe Ghali is doing a great job in reforming the financial system of Egypt. But we have to differentiate between his job and the Investment and Economy minusters' jobs. His role is to manage the "Cash Flow" of the country. Match the "available" monetary resources with the country's liabilities, internally and externally.

    The Economy minister draw the plan for the Macro develpment scheme across different sectors, the Investment minister designs a framework for creating and promoting the economic development plan to secure onshore and offshore "Capital" to be invested into the Macro Development Scheme and the Finance minister's job is to make sure the country doesnt go bankrupt by matching the liabilities created by the development activities (foreign borrowing for example) with resources to cover that (some of which r taxes!!)

    Now to the hated part of his job, the TAX! To be fair, when a business owner in Egypt try to find an Accountant to work for him and prepare his taxes, the strongest candidate is always the one who has a "proven track record" of tax evasion!! In this field, you're as good as how much you can "cook the book" and pay as low taxes as possible. Some even r skilled enough to show losses in their books to avoid paying taxes at all.

    To be fair, he is dealing with a mentality that sees the taxes r evil and something should be avoided at all costs...so resistance is expected! Of course there is corruption everywhere...but until the work ethics improves we have to start somewhere!!

    Now to the comments about China, Malaysia, Japan...etc. It's a complete different story than what you see on TV! I've been living in Asia for 7 years, I studied in their business schools, I worked for a Chinese bank for 3 years!! And I can fairly say that Ghali's performance during the credit crisi was WAY better than the Emerging Market's pack. The asian countries suffered a great deal over the past 2 years. Countries like S.Korea got hit very hard..their currency "Depreciated" almost 70& percent in few months and that was to keep the exporters from suiciding and the factories from being burnt down!! Did we go through that in Egypt?? I don't think so. Most of the Asian countries, except China, printed a negative GDP gross for the past 2 years...it was terrible. I personally suffered in my job due to the price thos countries paid for the overheating economies and excessive reliance on foreign debt. (Dubai anyone??)

    All i'm trying to say here is that before we formulate an opinion about Egypt's financial health in comparsion to "similar" economies...we shud do our homework and read a bit about that from independent resources.

    We still have a long way to go in Egypt, but to be fair..Ghali is doing a good job in ,at least, sheltring our economy from the state of chaos experienced by the world economy during the past 2 years.

    That's only my opinion of course...

    Cheers

    Ahmed

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  7. Thanks for the economic clarification.

    In spite of how hard Asian economies were hit by the credit crunch as compared to Egypt, I still think there are objective factors that attest to the robustness of the economies of for example South Korea and Malaysia, as compared to Egypt.

    Their economic sectors are more diversified, the percentage of revenue they generate from their multinationals is immensely larger than Egypt, they are less reliant on economic aid...

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