ECONOMY: Cote D’Ivoire on the Brink of a Breakdown – Premier

By IPS Correspondents Reprint | | Print |

Franky Kouakou

ABIDJAN, Mar 19 2003 (IPS) - ”Our country is on the brink of a breakdown. It is being torn apart and crippled by a civil war, and our economy is collapsing,” laments Seydou Diarra, the prime minister of Cote d’Ivoire.

The conflict in Cote d’Ivoire erupted on Feb 19, following an army mutiny staged to topple the government of President Laurent Gbagbo.

”If the war continues for the next two months and the northern borders remain closed, an economic catastrophe will unfold. And, businesspeople will find it hard to pay their taxes,” says Jean-Louis Billon, president of Cote d’Ivoire’s Chamber of Commerce.

”Since the outbreak of the war on Sep19, all economic activities have been operating below the capacity,” says Billon.

The Chamber of Commerce, which used to issue at least 250 receipts for cross-border trade, now issues only about 20, a day.

In January, the National Federation of Industries and Services of Cote d’Ivoire said: ”many companies have been forced to lay off half their workers in order to withstand the effects of the war”.

Nazaire Gounongbe, secretary general of Sifca, a private company, says their sugar-manufacturing firm, Sucrivoire, has lost more than three billion CFA (about five million U.S. dollars). The plants are located in rebel-controlled areas.

”If the conflict is not over by the beginning of the rainy season, which is expected in April”, he warns, ”the losses will be even greater.”

Tourism, too, is faring no better.

A sign, posted at a complex, reads: ”Hotel closed. No guests” at the Baie des Sirenes Hotel in Grand Bereby town. Two guards stationed at the complex’s main entrance keep an eye on the building. ”It’s all very sad right now. Life is becoming more and more unbearable,” says a former worker.

In San Pedro, the country’s second port and a region with huge tourist potential, the situation is similar. Though not closed, the town’s famous hotels are vacant. In Dagbego, not far from San Pedro, Beatrice Grandcolas and Olivier Vangasse, a French couple, who run a vacation village called ‘Best of Africa’, are bitter. They have been living in the area for about 12 years and created the village themselves.

Their revenue has dwindled in the past five months. ”No one has checked-in, no one comes for lunch, and no one comes for drinks,” Grandcolas laments.

Before the war, the two hoteliers were upgrading their facilities (swimming pool, outdoor sports, air-conditioning, generator, cooker and refrigerator).

”In October, we discontinued the work, cancelled an order for a new car,” says Grandcolas.

The port of Abidjan is also experiencing problems after the country’s northern borders with Mali and Burkina Faso were shutdown.

Like many other cities, Dimbokro, in central Cote d’Ivoire, is feeling the effects of the war. The town’s sole textile company, UTEXCI, has just closed down and lay off 800 workers. There is not enough cotton – grown in hostile rebel-controlled north – to feed the factory.

UTEXI director, Francois Chavann, says ”if we can’t get cotton, we will close the factory”.

The railway, too, which connects Cote d’Ivoire with Burkina Faso in the north, shut down the day after the war started.