02 agosto 2022

La lezione dello Sri Lanka

La rivolta dei singalesi contro la classe dirigente dello Sri Lanka rischia di non essere un unicum tra i Paesi che si trovano ad affrontare crisi economico-politiche. L’analisi di Guido Bolaffi

Quelli dello Sri Lanka rischiano di essere qualcosa di più che i seri, serissimi guai, politici ed economici, di una paradisiaca ma sfortunata isola dell’Oceano Indiano. Infatti, le ragioni della crisi alla base della rivolta degli singalesi contro l’intera loro classe dirigente hanno la stessa natura di quelle che agitano i governi di molti altri paesi in via di sviluppo.

Non a caso, scrivono sul Financial Times Martin Sandbu, Jonathan Wheatley e John Reed nell’articolo The global Fallout: “Sri Lanka's economic and political woes are far more than a national problem – they are a dramatic example of the potential problems looming in a number of other emerging markets. If the string of economic shocks that have battered the global economy are hard enough to manage in rich countries, there is even more cause for worry in many of the poorer and emerging economies”. Diagnosi condivisa da Tina Fordham della Fordham Global Foresight, secondo cui “Emerging markets as an asset class are always the most sensitive to either economic and political risks. The way I look at Sri Lanka is the extent to which it is a canary in the coal mine”.

La verità è che con l’incalzare della crisi economica globale in “many poor and middle-income countries” stanno venendo al pettine gli errori, alcuni dei quali davvero madornali, commessi dai loro governi ai danni delle rispettive economie. Al riguardo di quelli che hanno messo in ginocchio lo Sri Lanka, per larga parte appartenenti alla famiglia di potere dei Rajapaksa, è molto istruttivo l’elenco stilato dal diplomatico indiano Mani Shankar Aiyar nell’articolo The Sri Lanka collapse carries lessons for all South Asian governements: “Faced with a threatening overhang of unpaid debts amounting to over $51 billion the Rajapaksas thought they had found a magic potion in organic farming and, without giving a thought to the time and training it would take to switch to nation-wide organic cultivation, virtually stopped Sri Lanka’s massive import of chemical fertiliser. This sharply impacted rice cultivation, the staple of the Sri Lanka diet, raising food prices to dizzying, unprecedented levels. It also sank the output and, therefore, the export earnings from tea, their principal source of foreign exchange. Mismanagement of Covid led to such a wide spread of the pandemic that tourism, the single-most-important source of foreign exchange, came to a virtually standstill [...] The central bank is left with reserves of no more than $25 million when Sri Lanka requires at least a billion dollars a month to keep itself afloat”.

Un groviglio di “strafalcioni politico-amministrativi” che, sommato ai molteplici, gravissimi focolai di crisi che stanno incendiando l’economia mondiale, rischiano di innescare in molte regioni dell’Asia pericolosissime tensioni. Come lucidamente denuncia il vicedirettore esecutivo del Fondo Monetario Internazionale Gita Gopinath: “When you have a cost living crisis it causes not just economic but social and political unrests [...] We saw this last time we had a food crisis in 2008 when food prices was one of the triggers for the Arab spring”.

Un “darkening economic outlook” reso, se possibile, ancor più minaccioso dal fatto che esso potrebbe innescare un’inedita quanto preoccupante contrapposizione di interessi, non tanto, come in passato, tra Nord e Sud del Pianeta, quanto tra le stesse nazioni in via di sviluppo. Un rischio segnalato in tutta evidenza dal Financial Times dello scorso 17 luglio che scriveva: “Egypt, the world’s biggest wheat importer has been hit by soaring grain prices [...] Egypt is likely to muddle through avoiding default because of support from Gulf oil exporters [...] This illustrates how one country’s higher commodity import bill can be another’s bumper export revenue. High oil prices have been good for some oil exporters such as Saudi Arabia and UEA [...] Angola, Bahrain and Oman, which appeared to be running into debt difficulties a year ago, are among the small group of winners”.

Ma non basta. Visto che “In past crises a strengthening dollar has caused widespread distress because so many emerging economies borrowed in dollars and other foreign currencies. Today, large economies such India, Brazil and South Africa borrow mostly in their own currencies, with most of the debt held by local investors [...]

But domestic borrowing is no free pass. If Argentina falls into default this year the problem will be local rather than foreign currency debt”.