Is Somaliland Ready For Fighting Corruption And Bribery?

[Deeq A.]

Corruption is simply how government officials steal the public treasury and bribery is an extra government tax. Both of them are a burden to the poor consumer.

It is known to us that businessmen pay the legal tax – customes duties, port dues, demmurage charges etc each year. Let us know also businessmen pay bribes to local givernment officials for operating smooth instant clearance permit. The tax plus the bribe raises the businessmen’s bottom line cost to a higher amount.

The business has no problem to pay taxes and bribes simply because he considers the extra charges as additional costs. These additional costs (bribes) being paid to government officials at the gateways are what actually raise selling price for every imported consumable item, thus causing inflation.

Who finally pays this high price? Will political corruption and bribery are part of inflantion? If the answer is literally yes, how Somalilsnd government will deal with corruption and bribery?

In general, taxes and bribery discourage small business. When costs go up, the ability to start new business slows down. When costs go up, the purchasing power will deminish and small business will be closed, because overheads will increase and profit margins will fall. If small businesses disappear, many people will come out to the streets looking for sources of income. The more people lose sources of income, the more troubles of choas are likely to come out.

Job creation can be the solution to this problem. But how jobs are to be created? Where is the ability to create jobs? Jobs creations need knowledge and know-hows. How Somaliland government can create jobs for the unemployment when there are no resources and know-hows?

In simple terms corruption and bribery reduce the economic incentive to produce. This lowers a country’s output and drags down the entire nation’s standard of living.

Corruption and bribery, however, have a more damaging impact than most regular government taxes. First, paying bribes to officials reduces people’s trust in government. Second, corruption is a plunder of public wealth and thereby hinders national economic growth, and bribes are more damaging than a government tax because the amount paid in bribes is often both unknown and highly variable.

There is no week nor day nor hour when public property plunder tranny may not enter upon this country, and bribes are paid, because the people lost their decency and spirit of defiance.

An official that is free to operate without limits – whether limits imposed by arrogance or ignorance or fear of the responses from those harmed by their behavior – is an official that will plunder, degrade, and cheat at will, and act endlessly to fortify his own power. The reason the officials are operating with no limits is just beacuse they are not accountable to anyone.

When plunder becomes a way of life, government officials create for themselves a system that authorizes it and a loophole that glorifies it.

The Somaliland local cost of corruption and bribes is, when statistically speaking, estimated at more than $1.85 billion a year. Imagine how things would look like if such amount as this is invested in the country.

Somaliland businessmen only know how to buy and import commodities from the outside world and then sell the imports to local people, no more, no less. Whether this belief resembles the reality we all share is an issue that does not arise. But outright ignorance and negeligence by businessmen are not fairy tale.

It is sad that Somaliland businessmen are willingly and unwitingly not ready to invest their monies in their own country. The fields of agriculture, livestock and fisheries are the opportunities awaiting for investment, should Somaliland rich citizens are ready.

We must as Somaliland people recognize that corruption and bribes are integeral part of inflation. And if we don’t deal with corruption and bribery, they will deal with us? If Somaliland rich citizens would not invest their monies in the country, we Somaliland people must realize that we will only remain “consumers” for ever.

The only way Somaliland can survive is if we can change the way we think act and live. If we don’t deal with corruption and bribery, they will deal with us. Plunder and bribery are besides other factors what always causes our inability to control inflation.

By: Jama Falaag
Hargeisa, Somaliland