Government Activity And The Establishment Of Development Through The Pioneering Sector
Economy News – Baghdad Dr. Haitham Hamid Mutlaq Al-Mansour The recent economic climate has witnessed a clear evolution in the crystallization of the state's developmental role, in the movement of correction towards construction and reconstruction, especially in important structural aspects in the services sector and the employment sector, and focused steps to adjust the development path with the aim of revitalizing what was frozen in the previous government and completing stalled projects.
Perhaps the important question at this stage is about which development directions the current government should take in order to advance the correction and development process to its sustainable goal? And in which sector should it begin?
There are many development approaches addressed by theories of economic development that are feasible, but they may clash with the Iraqi economic reality, which suffers from a structural imbalance in production and demand. Therefore, the macroeconomic policy maker must start with what is possible and work to correct the sources of that possibility. In other words, development in the Iraqi economic reality must proceed from the following two axes:
First: Dealing scientifically with the economic reality and its distortions by entering into a thorny network of economic relationships that can lead to correcting the structural imbalance. These relationships are described as long-term and require a long period of time that includes the recovery of all agricultural, industrial, commercial, monetary, financial, and other sectors.
They assume a high degree of sector integration and high flexibility of the marginal substitution rate between the factors of production in its various sectors, in light of a complete reduction of the total cost functions. This requires significant financial, material, and human capabilities to diversify the structure of the economy and correct what has been distorted by decades of incorrect development policies and neglect, as this goal requires a long time to achieve or begin its path.
Second: Dealing realistically with the problematic data of the economic structure through planning for comprehensive development in the leading sector, namely the oil sector, starting from it to correct the distortion in the oil industry, through vertical concentration in the activities of the oil industry, including extractive, refining, and petrochemicals. This sector is the leading sector in enabling the development process through its forward and backward connections with other sectors and activities of the national economy.
The second approach is distinguished by its utmost importance in taking a strategic step to deepen the impact of the leading sector, as it enjoys material and financial returns that fall within the short-term limits, which often express the effectiveness of the overall policy in the macroeconomics.
The proposed approach of effective management of oil rents aims to achieve the correct combination of industrial interconnections between the rentier sector and other sectors to eliminate the displacement effect of rentier activity on other economic sectors, and to enhance the economic role of these sectors by linking them to the aforementioned sector, given its impact in directing government spending towards investment in infrastructure, social, health, and education systems necessary for the development process.
The experiences of rentier states similar to the Iraqi economy indicate that they have adopted a development approach in which annual budget items must be organically linked to the financial allocations of the general budget over the short, medium, and long terms. This is in addition to establishing a sovereign fund to invest oil surpluses sustainably in productive projects that generate material and social returns.
Now that the state has regained its ability to manage its resources and entered into many strategic projects with multiple economic links, it is possible to establish a governmental development axis capable of benefiting from the sustainable financial management mechanisms of the leading sector through a development approach that can be followed to achieve real results: It is represented by launching development from the leading sector that has the absolute advantage in contributing to the gross domestic product,
as it is likely that development will extend through this sector vertically and horizontally to and from the rest of its parts, and with the various sectors contributing to the chain of exchange of outputs and inputs, and focusing development activity on many sectors with organic horizontal interconnections that are likely to be of great importance to the development process in order to direct financing and investment activity towards its optimal function.
Therefore, I see the possibility of the government taking this development direction by planning for the oil sector and developing it vertically through planning for related internal activities such as the transformational industries in many economic sectors such as the construction and building sector and the electricity services sector, which are related to domestic consumer demand and would reduce the volume of imports.
On the one hand, on the other hand, the government must draw up a development plan to attract activities from weak sectors to achieve consistency in sectoral growth to raise their contribution to the GDP.
To enhance the proposed approach, a protective trade policy must be adopted that works to develop domestic demand for many industries branching off from the leading sector with organic links, and raise the levels of the GDP. https://economy-news.net/content.php?id=54790
