Re: Muslim world: prospects for future growth
FG,
I really had not focused on Privatization, and that is indeed an important event. Russia, Ukraine, and other states have had massive privatization efforts, with mixed results. Undoubtedly the huge influx of cash to the government of Pakistan will help enormously. As I understand it however, most of the investment in the Telecom spin off was out of the UAE, Qatar, Bahrain, Saudi etc. The pool of capital willing to invest in Pakistan is still largely limited to the oil rich Muslim countries. Unfortunately these Muslim countries are massively terrible managers of money.
You would think that after selling all that oil that Saudi would have huge quantities of excess capital. that is not really true. When Saudi wants to build a new pipeline, or devlope a new oil field, they do not have the capacity to do it themselves. They require Billions in investments from Western oil companies for the build out. There are also analysts that insist that the Saudi Oil fields have already seen peak production, and that very few new oil fields have been found. That pool of capital has funded Islamic growth for years, and has artificiallly held the standard of living in Muslim countries higher.
So the Oil pool is slowly drying up, and the Islamic world hase very little to show for all the petro dollars that have been pumped. Absent oil what is going to drive Muslim economies?