The.Economist.2007-02-10 (966424), страница 13
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The government has sold its stake in the industry in tranches. But nowinvestors are piling in. As in other parts of South and Central America they are attracted by higher pricesfor sugar because of its use for ethanol. Industry sources predict that land under sugar will expand by10,000 hectares (25,000 acres) a year, more than doubling output over the next decade. That would turnPeru into an exporter—though not on the scale of Brazil or Colombia.Last year, local investors secured a controlling stake in Casa Grande, the largest sugar plantation.Bioterra, a Spanish company, plans a $90m ethanol plant nearby.
Maple, a Texas company, has bought10,600 hectares of land in the northern department of Piura. Its plans call for an investment of $120mand ethanol production of 120m litres a year. Brazilian and Ecuadorean investors are also active.Part of the attraction is that Peru has signed a free-trade agreement with the United States.
Providedthat it can satisfy the concerns of the new Democratic-controlled Congress in Washington, DC, about theenforcement of labour rights, this agreement should be approved later this year. It would renderpermanent existing trade preferences under which ethanol from Peru can enter the United States dutyfree. By contrast, ethanol exported from Brazil, the world's biggest producer, must pay a tariff of 54cents a gallon.Two harsh realities might sour these sweet dreams. Colombia, Central America and the DominicanRepublic all enjoy similar preferences and have similar plans.
Colombia already produces 360m litres ayear of ethanol, much of it for export. The second question is whether sugar—a thirsty crop—is the bestuse of Peru's desert coastal strip, with its precarious water supply. One of the country's achievements ofthe past decade has been the private sector's development of new export crops. It would be ironic ifthese businesses were threatened by sugar's privatisation.Copyright © 2007 The Economist Newspaper and The Economist Group. All rights reserved.About sponsorshipParaguayThe next Chávez?Feb 8th 2007 | ASUNCIÓNFrom The Economist print editionA would-be political messiahReutersFOR 60 years, first in dictatorship and since 1989 in democracy,Paraguay has been governed by the Colorado Party. That may soonchange—at least if a rebellious former Catholic bishop has his way.
Thepresidential election is not until April 2008. But Father Fernando Lugohas already become the most popular candidate of a diverseopposition. He is an admirer of Venezuela's socialist president, HugoChávez, and of Bolivia's Evo Morales.Like neighbouring Bolivia, Paraguay is landlocked and poor. Thoughmost Paraguayans are mestizos (of mixed race), most speak Guaranías well as Spanish. As bishop of San Pedro, one of the poorest parts ofParaguay, for 11 years Father Lugo worked closely with peasantmovements agitating for land reform. That is a pressing need in acountry where more than two-fifths of the population of 6m still live inrural areas, and where land ownership is very unequal. Last year, heattracted some 50,000 people to a rally against corruption. OrdinaryParaguayans greet him in the street, as if he were a rock star.Because of his political activities in San Pedro, where the threat oftakeovers of commercial farms sparked tensions, the CatholicLugo swaps mitre for somethinghierarchy stepped in and obliged Father Lugo to step down as bishop.lighterIn December, he resigned as a priest in order to enter politics.
Thechurch has not so far accepted his resignation. Nevertheless, he has founded a political movement calledTeko joja (“justice and equality” in Guaraní).Many of Father Lugo's supporters come from the left. But he has attracted the backing of Patria Querida,a larger party founded by a conservative Catholic businessman. He says he wants to apply Christiancharity to politics and dreams of “a different country, of equality, without discrimination.”After decades of corrupt misrule by the Colorados, the current president, Nicanor Duarte, has taken stepsto reform the country.
He has also sought the friendship of the United States, partly to offset thepowerful influence of Brazil. But under the constitution, Mr Duarte cannot seek a second term.Since that document also bans priests from standing, the president has offered to negotiate aconstitutional amendment that would allow both him and Father Lugo to run. In a country where politicsis such a tainted profession, Paraguayans may flock to the man who promises to cleanse the temple. Butwhether he is a democratic reformer or a demagogic populist remains to be seen.Copyright © 2007 The Economist Newspaper and The Economist Group.
All rights reserved.About sponsorshipBangladeshEverybody but the politicians is happyFeb 8th 2007 | DHAKA AND SHIRAJGANJFrom The Economist print editionThe new military-backed government has sensible ideas for tackling Bangladesh's problems butthe worst of these problems, the two begums, are not for quittingAPGet article backgroundWHEN Bangladesh's army seized power last month, no one at first seemed to notice. On January 11th, thegenerals ordered President Iajuddin Ahmed to declare a state of emergency to forestall a rigged andviolent election due on January 22nd.
Basic rights were suspended and a technocratic caretakergovernment appointed. Some 40,000 low-level gangsters and political thugs have since been detained—though that is only a third more than in an average month in Bangladesh. No tanks have lumbered ontoDhaka's choked streets. No local politician or foreign government has kicked up a fuss.This week, however, the army bared its teeth. On successive nights it arrested two dozen much grandersuspects.
All are senior members or accomplices of the two political parties that have looted and misruledBangladesh, one of the world's most corrupt countries, for the 16 years since its last military government.More arrests are promised. Senior officers say they have drafted a list of 420 top-level targets, includingmuch of the last parliament. Under the emergency laws, detainees can, in effect, be held indefinitely.Another draconian measure, to make forfeit the property of any suspect who evades arrest for 72 hours,awaits the president's signature.A convenient tool for processing this round-up is in place: the “speedy-trial tribunals” designed by thegovernment led by Khaleda Zia's Bangladesh Nationalist Party (BNP), which ran the country until the endof last year. The purpose of these tribunals was to try serious crimes within 90 days—but corruption, theBNP said at the time, would not be among such crimes.
The army says otherwise and has formed teams ofmilitary and civilian investigators for the task. It believes they can find most of the evidence needed toconvict the suspects within the given time.Dhaka is in an excited state, with a few hundred politicians and businessmen fearing arrest, and almosteveryone else delighted by the prospect. To start the week, your correspondent's first scheduledinterviewee had been arrested overnight; his second expressed a desire to go home and pack a suitcase(“I need a mosquito net, there are too many mosquitoes in prison”); his host for the evening then calledto say that his four guests of honour were in the clink.The detainees are mostly from an elite group that has prospered whichever of Bangladesh's two mainparties has been in power, with friends in both camps.
They also include confidants of the parties' leaders,Mrs Zia and Sheikh Hasina Wajed of the Awami League (AL). The autocratic habits and mutual loathing ofthese two women are the main cause of the mess. One prisoner, Mosaddeq Hossain Falu, who began asMrs Zia's factotum, progressed to become a member of parliament and proud owner of two televisionstations, a newspaper and a bank. With trademark moustaches and grin, he campaigned as the “alwayssmiling Mr Falu”.Non-politicos, including employees of NGOs, of which there are more than in any other country, and manyof Bangladesh's unusually politically alert poor, are rejoicing at the politicians' downfall. Moreover, theadministration—in the way of military, or military-backed, governments—is promising a slew of other goodthings.For a start, it vows to depoliticise the institutions.
It has appointed a new electoral commission and forcedout the bosses of the anti-corruption authority. It promises to fix a chronic power shortage, and onJanuary 31st approved a deal with an Indian firm to build a 240MW power station. On February 3rd itannounced plans to make the state banks more accountable, a step the politicians and their cronies, whohave bust the banks by extracting and defaulting on massive loans, had resisted. Such measures, theadministration says, are necessary precursors to fair elections. It has not said when an election might be.This sets the government apart: most military-backed regimes announce a proximate election date, thenlet it pass.
And it has issued other ambiguous signals. On January 25th it announced a clamp on themedia—but promised not to implement it after newspaper editors objected.It also bulldozed thousands of illegal slum-dwellings, but then eased off on the advice that hammeringpoor Bangladeshis, about 40% of the population, would not make it popular.
Beside a railway line inDhaka, a group of such women plucked chicken skins on the scrap of wasteland that passes for a publiclavatory and the site of their illegal homes. They scavenge the skins from a nearby market, one explained,then sell them plucked for a few cents. Since the army took charge, they have dismantled their cardboardshacks each morning and rebuilt them at night.Although the army is stepping carefully, it is unlikely to allow elections for at least a year. Correcting theBNP's fraudulent electoral roll, including 12.2m dubious names, according to the National DemocraticInstitute, will take several months.
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