Finance and Economics；Free exchange;Arab spring cleaning; Why trade reform matters in the Middle East;
财经；自由探讨；阿拉伯国家翘盼改革春风；贸易改革为何对中东经济至关重要；

A year after the start of the Arab spring, no government in the Middle East has attempted serious economic reform even though it is obvious both that economies are distorted and that discontent over living standards has played a big part in the uprisings. The main reaction by governments has been to buy off further protests by increasing public spending. Saudi Arabia boosted government spending by over 50% between 2008 and 2011.

阿拉伯之春爆发已有一年。虽然很明显当前经济发展畸形，且当年对生活水平的不满正是革命爆发的主因之一，但至今，中东各国政府都没有尝试过任何认真的经济改革。面对现状，他们主要通过增加公共支出来收买人心、防止更多的抗议活动。2011年沙特政府支出比2008年增长了50%。

Although higher oil prices have been enough to finance these rises, much of the extra spending has gone into public-sector wages and consumer subsidies. Food and fuel subsidies are often huge: over 10% of GDP in Egypt. In the region as a whole, fuel subsidies rose from 2.3% of GDP in 2009 to 3.2% in 2011.

固然，油价的涨幅足以保障这部分支出的增长，但很大程度上这笔钱是用在公职人员加薪和消费者补贴上的。食品和燃油补贴数额巨大：在埃及，这一数字超过了GDP的10%；在整个中东地区，燃油补贴占GDP比例从2009年的2.3%增长到了2011年的3.2%。

These subsidies benefit the rich, keep loss-making firms alive and damage the economy. According to the IMF, the richest fifth of Jordanians capture 40% of fuel-subsidy gains; the poorest fifth get 7%. More important, subsidies exacerbate the region’s most important economic problem, which, argue Adeel Malik of the Oxford Centre for Islamic Studies and Bassem Awadallah*, a former Jordanian finance minister, is “that it has been unable to develop a private sector that is independent, competitive and integrated with global markets”. By distorting domestic prices, subsidising energy-guzzling firms and increasing public-sector wages relative to private-sector ones, the past year’s actions have made it even harder to develop a flourishing private sector.

这些补贴肥了富裕阶层，让亏损的企业苟延残喘，损害了经济的运行。IMF称，约旦最富有的20%群体获得了燃油补贴总额中的40%，而最穷的20%群体仅拿到7%。更重要的是，补贴政策使本地最严重的经济恶疾进一步恶化——牛津伊斯兰教研究中心学者、约旦前财政部长爱迪尔·马利克称：“约旦从未能发展一个独立、竞争力强、与全球市场接轨的私营部门。”去年，扰乱国内价格、补贴高油耗公司、公职人员相对私营雇员加薪等行为使得私营部门的繁荣愈发困难。

It was hard enough before. The Middle East has strikingly few private companies, less than one-third of the number per person in eastern Europe. Everywhere the state dominates the economy. In Egypt the public sector accounts for 40% of value-added outside agriculture—an unusually large share for a middle-income country. Such private firms as do exist tend to be large and closely connected to the state. The average Middle Eastern company is ten years older than in East Asia or eastern Europe because new entrants are kept out by pervasive red tape. The authors reckon it costs roughly 20 times the average annual income to start a firm in Syria and Yemen (assuming anyone would want to), just over twice the average globally. In a few Arab countries, like Tunisia, some notorious personifications of crony capitalism have fallen foul of political change but the practice has by no means ended.

这之前已经够难了。中东地区的私有公司少得惊人，其人均占有公司数量不到欧洲的三分之一。政府把持了经济的各个领域。在埃及，农业之外的产品附加值中，国营部门占了40%——对于中等收入国家而言，这个比例算是较大了。真正存在的私营公司也往往规模较大、与政府关系密切。中东地区公司平均寿命比东亚或东欧国家长10年，因为新的竞争者被无处不在的监管繁文缛节排除在市场之外。作者称，在中东地区创业（假设还有人愿意创业的话）所需要的家底（以年均收入衡量）是在叙利亚和也门的20倍，是全球平均值的两倍多。在突尼斯等国，一些臭名昭著的裙带资本主义的典型代表与政变者有矛盾，但实际操作上还是老样子。

The weakness of the private sector is typically seen as a domestic problem with domestic solutions, notably privatisation and deregulation. Earlier attempts to strengthen private businesses by pursuing those policies were in practice half-hearted or skewed towards well-connected insiders, tainting the whole process of reform. The risk of the same outcome is a big reason why, in the aftermath of the Arab spring, risk-averse governments have shied away from further efforts to privatise or cut red tape. But, argue Messrs Malik and Awadallah, there is also a regional aspect to the private sector’s weakness—the failure to develop regional markets. Here, reform may be politically easier.

一般来说，私营部门的不振被视为国内问题，可以靠对内政策调整解决，如私有化、减少监管等。事实上，之前通过这些措施来强化私营部门的尝试要么三心二意，要么便宜了一些人脉广泛的“圈内人”，因而阻碍了整个改革的进程。阿拉伯之春后，各国政府求稳避险，不愿进一步推进私有化和简化监管的改革，很大程度上是因为考虑到会出现和之前同样的结果。但阿迪尔称，各国私营部门的衰弱也有一个区域性原因——未能建立区域统一市场。这方面的改革在政治上或许更容易些。

Arab companies are globally uncompetitive. The Middle East accounts for less than 1% of world non-fuel exports, compared with 4% from Latin America (a region with a comparable population). Turkey exports five times as much as Egypt, which has a population of similar size. Despite its favourable geographical location the Middle East is rarely part of global supply chains. And of its modest global exports, inter-Arab trade accounts for less than a tenth, barely more than in 1960.

中东地区公司全球竞争能力较弱。世界非油类出口总额中，仅有不到1%来自中东地区，而人口规模类似的拉丁美洲地区占4%。土耳其人口规模与埃及类似，但出口额是埃及的5倍。尽管占据有利地理位置，中东地区在全球供应链条中地位轻微。中东地区的全球贸易出口量本来就不大，而其中本区域内的贸易仅占10%，比1960年时多了一点而已。

The usual explanation for the failure to trade is the region’s resource curse. Because it is so easy to export crude oil, Arab countries have failed to develop significant merchandise exports. And because so many export the same thing—oil—they naturally do not trade with each other. Even if that were the whole story, the region would still need to develop competitive manufacturing or services to cope with demographic change. Oil cannot generate the tens of millions of new jobs that predominantly young Arab countries will need. But it is not the whole story. Arab countries could trade with each other more than they do, and part of the reason that they do not is self-inflicted.

通常认为，中东地区贸易衰微现象是由于其资源结构的单一。因为出口原有轻而易举，中东国家从未发展强大的一般商品出口。又因为这么多国家都出口同一产品——石油，他们自然不会相互买卖。就算这就是当前局面的全部原因，中东地区仍需发展有竞争力的制造业或服务业，以适应人口变化。石油不能为大多年轻的阿拉伯国家创造所需的工作岗位。况且这并非问题的全貌。阿拉伯国家完全可以相互开展更多的贸易，现在之所以未能实现，部分原因是人为导致的。

Obstacles to regional trade are legion. Costly “trade logistics”—non-tariff barriers, red tape and poor infrastructure—add 15% to the value of Egyptian clothes and 10% to the total value of all goods shipped in the region. It costs companies an average of 95 man-days a year just to deal with trade bureaucracies. It takes longer and is more expensive to ship goods between two Middle Eastern ports than to send them from the Middle East to America. Such market fragmentation, the authors argue, is the consequence of the region’s centralised, state-led economic policies.

区域贸易的阻碍太多了。“贸易物流”成本高昂——非关税性壁垒、繁杂的贸易手续和落后的基础设施——占到了埃及服装出口价的15%，占到了中东区域内所有商品价值的10%。如果每家公司出一个人来处理繁杂的贸易手续，那么一年中仅这些工作平均就要消耗95天。在两个中东港口间的货运成本要比从中东到美洲的运价还要高。市场分割到这种程度，作者称，是“集中化、国营主导的经济政策所导致”。

Just start somewhere
开始改革吧，随便从那儿着手

More trade would have familiar benefits: larger markets should enable firms to reap greater economies of scale, increase returns to investment and adopt more new technology. Just as important in the Middle Eastern context, more open trade would begin the process of dismantling over-centralised states and create a constituency for further economic change.

大家都知道贸易增长的好处：更大的市场可以让公司更好地利用规模经济、增加投资回报、采用更新的技术。鉴于中东目前政治状况，开放贸易还有一个重要功能，就是开始消除经济集中化，并为未来进一步的经济改革争取民意支持。

Of course, trade liberalisation is no substitute for privatisation, financial reform and other domestic measures. But it has a political advantage over those reforms. Because the steps required are relatively small ones (reductions in red tape, for instance) they should provoke less resistance from insiders; and because regional trade can be presented as a pan-Arab goal, it does not have the same taint of “Westernisation” that discredited earlier reform efforts. Regional trade would be only a start. But the main thing is to start somewhere.

当然，贸易自由化并不能代替私有化、金融改革和其他国内改革。但贸易自由化在政治上比其他更有优势，因为所需要迈出的步伐相对较小（比如，减少过度监管），引发的内部抵制较少，且区域贸易可以被描绘成一个有利于阿拉伯世界自身利益的目标，而不会有浑水摸鱼的“西方化”（之前的改革正是因此丧失了民心）。区域贸易仅仅是一个开始，但不论从哪一处着手，尽早开始是正经。