Opinion Sur
The non-core countries beg for investment while, at the same time, suffering from a tremendous criminal drain on their surpluses. If this drainage of resources were closed, countries would greatly increase their capacity to invest from their own sources.
Non-core countries face a dilemma that can be resolved politically. On the one hand, they promote the almost indiscriminate arrival of foreign investment by offering all kinds of facilities. At the same time, they tolerate or fail to confront a tremendous criminal drainage of resources that occurs through various mechanisms: (a) Due to tax evasion and elusion practiced by large corporations and affluent families, they are ill-gotten capitals that flee abroad. (b) Through crimes committed by exporting oligopolies that under-invoice their sales to subsidiaries or associated companies that then sell those same products at full price to their buyers, thus hiding profits and evading the corresponding taxes. (c) Crimes committed by large importers who over-invoice what they bring into the country in order to access more managed foreign currency than they needed. (d) High-income sectors with the capacity to influence public policies impose the continuation of a regressive tax structure, those who have less pay more while they evade their tax responsibility. (e) With this power, the rulers are able to overturn public spending allocations in their favor through subsidies or lucrative tariffs for basic services that they control.
Taken together, these and other ways of evading, eluding, and absconding huge undeclared resources drain the ability of countries to dispose of and allocate much of their surpluses. If this criminal drain were closed, each country would increase its capacity to finance with its own resources those productive and social investments that it considers a priority.
Sovereign states could allocate resources recovered from crime drainage in areas that are essential for national development. On the one hand, to make large-scale investments to support the base of the productive apparatus, financing small and medium-sized enterprises in the popular economy. For example, among other modalities, establishing developers that identify and accompany promising inclusive productive initiatives together with trusts specialized in investing in them and financing their initial stages.
Other priority areas for allocating the recovered resources range from covering the accumulated social debt to, at the same time, financing the national scientific and technological system that includes, among many other fields, the Institutes of Agricultural and Industrial Technology, universities, colleges, and schools in sectors and territories punished and postponed by the concentrating dynamic.
Closing the criminal drain of resources does not preclude the arrival of genuine foreign investments that complement, not replace, national investment. A country that mobilizes all its productive potential and strengthens its social infrastructure generates genuine conditions to mobilize the fundamental investments they require, without begging for their arrival with onerous concessions.
Although it weighs heavily, the concentrating trend can be reversed. A country cannot get out of its quagmire without closing the tremendous criminal drain of resources that sterilizes the disposal of a large part of the surplus it generates. In order to move forward with equity, justice, and sustainability, it is essential to stop the actions of actors who violate the normative order with open or staged crimes.
We pointed out at the beginning of this text that the non-core countries face a dilemma that can be resolved politically. This implies establishing in each country broad social coalitions capable of removing the subjugation of those who accumulate uncontrollably. Facing this challenge opens up new directions and ways of functioning that are worth navigating with determination and creativity. It is untenable to go back and apply unsuccessful alleged solutions, please no more of the same.
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