By Kastriot Jahaj, MBA
Naturally, the key word today is Covid-19 pandemic. More than ever, people's minds are trying to find the causes and to some extent the consequences. While some defend the idea of conspiracy, others live with the anxiety of the unknown. Is this the revenge of the poor world against the rich, a means of the West to underdeveloped countries, or a curse to the rapid growth of the world's population? There is still no exact answer to this question, but ideas and thoughts tend to be grouped in reality before, during and after Covid-19, the new world we will be part of.The world is facing two major consequences that the Covid-19 pandemic will continue to leave behind. The first has an economic character and the other a health one.
The governments of most countries of the world have already positioned themselves in the trenches of this war and are working to pass with as few consequences as possible the danger present for their country.Most developed countries focus on the post-pandemic economic consequences. Inevitably, measures to mitigate these consequences have been quite aggressive and unprecedented.
Some developed countries have not even applied the "traditional" package of social restrictive measures, as they consider it a deterrent to the country's productive activity. These countries assume that a large part of the population will be affected by this virus (50-70 percent), leaving the infection of the masses to pave the way for the growth of the society's immunity.In contrast to the above, underdeveloped or developing countries, conditioned by the impossibility to apply such measures, are mainly oriented towards meeting the shortcomings of health systems, to meet at least the immediate needs in this area. Is it simply the immediate need for danger posed by Covid-19, or the inability to see it tomorrow?If we analyze what Covid-19 found in the world, I believe it sheds light on what it can leave behind, or what this episode can bring to a new world.World economies are facing high financial costs today. Experience has shown that any global economic crisis would entice all major international actors, who better than anyone else are aware of the fact that crises bring substantial economic changes globally. These crises do not generate a positive effect for any economy, but tend to push the economic train forward through post-crisis measures and motivations. With this crisis we will understand the difference between developed countries and the rest of the world, where the former find it easier to get out of the traditional framework of austerity measures.
In contrast, less developed, or poorer, countries should choose between the costs of the second round of non-traditional measures and the negative effects that their failure could have created.Many of us are familiar with the rapid spread of virtual currencies in recent years. Their highest volume has been exchanged mainly on remote east stock exchanges. There have been cases when these coins, although not in their infancy, have been embraced by the monetary authorities.
But can these currencies continue to be a safe financial medium? We do not have long evidence of this phenomenon, but I think not. This is due to the fact that their overestimation or devaluation does not respond to economic factors, but is subject to speculation. Moreover these instruments are not regulated by an authority, as is the case with traditional money. In times of crisis, such as what we are living, investments tend to be oriented towards safer exchange instruments or investment in developed countries, as a result of the lower risk that these countries pose to well-developed financial markets. Isn't this a good opportunity to increase the demand to invest in safer financial instruments?Today, countries are grouped into three main categories, based on their economic development stage: developed, developing and underdeveloped countries. Developing countries have always been constantly trying to close the economic gap that exists between them and developed countries - the process of catching up. The situation so far resembles a scale where each movement of one arm would overturn the other. In this sense this crisis slows down or at worst regresses the process of catching up to the detriment of underdeveloped countries.I was drawn to the publication of observations by authorities such as NASA, where air pollution in places where strong measures of social restriction have been applied is presented at minimal levels.
The presentation of the results of air pollution has been supplemented by satellite photos of some mainly industrial areas, such as the industrial area of Wuhan in China, Lombardia in Italy and many other examples. Isn't this an opportunity today, but impossible in normal times of peace to assess the effects and level of destruction of the atmosphere by industrial and urban pollution? Could we understand how much damage is without realizing how much damage we are doing? Isn’t it giving the world a good opportunity to see in a given time frame how independent the world is today from hydrocarbon consumption? Also, isn't this a good opportunity on the eve of the electric car revolution?Everyone would see as a science-fiction film a scenario where international borders are closed, airports are closed, citizens' movements are restricted, the whole social life of the society is paralyzed. In normal times it would seem impossible for the developed world to live in this situation for weeks or months.
Didn't Covid-19 give us this opportunity to understand that it is possible?Wasn't a test of all the capacity and response of human-raised and fast-paced health systems needed in recent years? It should be noted that in military terms this simulation is done constantly. Such health-level simulations would be more than necessary to help more or less assess the optimality of investment in this area in the future.I was drawn to a post on social media where the cost of an F-16 fighter jet was converted into the value of several thousand respirators for artificial respiration.
Most countries in the world today are looking to buy hundreds of thousands of such devices as an emergency. This kind of quantitative comparison between a military vehicle and a vital medical device, apart from the fact that it does not seem to me to be accidental, on the contrary pushes me to think that Covid-19, among other things, can bring a redistribution of economic resources, as in this case by the military to the health, and perhaps beyond.
We are all interested in different ways, or we are sure to have information about the reserves that the food supply chain has. However, I am of the opinion that it is not the only system we need to take care of to stay afloat in the event of a crisis of this magnitude. Despite the concern of a good part of the population, the operation of this chain has not shown any problems, tested in terms of double demand for these products in a short time. According to the World Food and Agriculture Organization, a third of the world's food production is not consumed, but digested or lost. This surplus in supply is a great loss for the actors of this economic segment. Isn't it a reality that Covid-19 gave a golden opportunity to this sector in this period by shifting this oversupply of food stocks from factory warehouses to consumer kitchens, transferring the equivalent monetary value from the consumer to the manufacturers of these products? Wouldn't it be a new opportunity to develop this sector, while most other sectors suffer the consequences of the Covid-19 situation, the duration of which is still unknown? In the same line as above, the development policies of underdeveloped or developing countries should be analyzed, which consider as the only opportunities for economic development the increase of investments in industry, services sector, construction or trade, giving up what they have done most: agriculture. Isn't agriculture the main engine of the global food chain? Is the crisis caused by Covid-19 enough to enable a re-configuration of these countries' development policies towards agriculture, as a sector with secure benefits in times of crisis? Don't you think that's what developed countries would want? Of course, I'm not looking for a conspiracy scenario in the above questions, but I think most of them present a good part of the picture beforehand and what it will leave behind.
Comments