Wednesday, February 26, 2014

Resource Rich But Poor People

Out of twenty “resource rich”—most of these resources are minerals such as iron ore, gold and bauxite—countries in sub-Saharan Africa, 14 have some of the lowest per capita income.

Former UN secretary-general Kofi Annan says that governments are selling mining concessions too cheap. The Democratic Republic of Congo alone lost $1 billion selling five mining assets, a comparison between the actual selling price.  An independent assessment points outbecause most of these countries don’t have the required geo-data to peg a rational value to their resources; in fact, the governments often possess much lesser information than the companies.

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