Posted on Sunday 14 May 2006
Bashing imaginary conquistadors
“For more than 500 years, our resources have been pillaged – this has to end now,” Bolivian president Evo Morales said, after announcing he was unilaterally rewrite contracts with foreign oil firms.
But viewing them as Bolivia’s new conquistadors is as idiotic as it is self-defeating.
As the Economist argued last week, economic nationalism does not work:
“As the original owners of their oil and gas, (producing countries) are naturally keen to retain as much money from extracting it as possible.
Ever since Mexico nationalised its oil industry in 1938, producing countries have gradually increased their take at the expense of western oil firms…
But tearing up contracts or confiscating property also carries costs, which the resource nationalists of Latin America (and elsewhere) seldom acknowledge.
Mr Morales is gambling that multinationals will stay on as contractors, on tough terms. Even if they do, nationalisation makes outsiders leerier about investing in the future and so raises the cost of capital not just in the oil industry but for the economy as a whole.
When the oil price falls and producing countries find it too expensive to develop their own resources, foreign firms will demand better terms to take up where they left off…
This is the third time that Bolivia has nationalised its oil industry, and the second that Venezuela has squeezed foreigners (having nationalised in 1975, it invited them back two decades later).
State-run oil companies are often inefficient. They also risk becoming politicised, as Venezuela’s has under Mr Chavez…
At the very least, state-run oil firms are likely to suffer from underinvestment, as governments milk them for as much revenue as possible.”
Xénophobie andine
“J’aime pas les étrangers, ils viennent manger le pain des Français,” disait Fernand Raynaud.
Ce mot d’ordre a depuis été adopté, et adapté aux circonstances locales, par de nombreux chefs d’État depuis plusieurs décennies.
Mobutu Sese Seko au Zaïre, Julius Nyerere en Tanzanie, Laurent Gbagbo en Côte d’Ivoire, Robert Mugabe au Zimbabwe (entre autres) ont tous cherché à faire le bonheur des peuples en expulsant les étrangers.
C’est actuellement en Amérique latine que le nationalisme économique a ses partisans les plus zélés.
Le président vénézuelien Hugo Chavez tape allègrement sur les compagnies pétrolières étrangères, accusées d’exploiter le pays.
En Bolivie – pays également riche en hydrocarbures – son émule Evo Morales a aussi décidé de mettre fin aux rapines de ceux qu’il considère comme de nouveaux conquistadors.
“Cela fait plus de 500 ans qu’on pille nos ressources,” a-t-il déclaré. “Il est temps que cela cesse.”
Morales a announcé qu’il modifiait unilatéralement les contrats avec les compagnies étrangères, et ceci sans compensation, pour donner au “peuple bolivien” la part de la richesse nationale qui lui revient.
On pourrait remarquer que ce sont des multinationales européennes et brésiliennes qui ont découvert et mis en valeur les importants gisements de gaz boliviens. Ces compagnies ont investi plus de 3 milliards de dollars dans le pays.
La nationalisation des hydrocarbures boliviens risque de se terminer comme le sketch de Fernand Reynaud:
“L’étranger est parti, et depuis on n’a plus de pain dans mon village. Il était boulanger.”