हाउ जापान इस देअलिंग विथ थे इकनॉमिक Crisis

Japan has not been witnessing any major economic growth for a while now so when news come out last week that their economy shrunk by 12.70 percent for the last three quarters it took a lot of people by surprise. The nikkei is at around 7500 compare to its heyday when it hit 40000 in the late 1980s.The Japanese economy relies heavily on its export and with the global economic crisis a lot of countries are just not buying what is coming out of the Japanese factory. Their current crisis is like the worse since the second world war.From their auto industry to their electronic corporations the slowdown here is all over the place.This economy has witness a 12 percent shrink in the past two years which is amazing for an economy which is ranked second in the world.The prime minister of Japan was the first to visit President Barack Obama in the white house and both leaders vowed to avoid protectionism as a means to solve their economic problems.The Japanese economy shrank by 12.1 in the fourth quarter of the year 2008.The Japanese are taking the US approach to try and save some companies by bailing them out instead of letting the market decides who stays on in the playing field.Their bailout package was about 158trillion yen if I am not mistaking.

Some solutions

The technology for road construction is already out there and there is a lot of local companies that can get the job done. Give the local guys the chance to get the work done.One of the things that I find out once I got back is that there are people that are trained with all the knowledge to get things done, they are just not given the chance to get it done.

The Problems

The first one has to be the one of road infrastructure. There is a saying that build a good road and development would follow and that applies to the society here also. The roads would help to transport a lot of the raw materials that the country produces, getting them into the markets. The transportation problem gets serious especially during the periods when there is rainfall.

Corruption. This one is present in all societies and that is not any different in this one. I seems to be more pronounce here though. Personally I am going by just stories that I have heard. I have not personally being involved in any grand scale corruption activity. But from what people are saying it is the other of the day here. People get arrested after the act and some get thrown into jail but the money is never recovered. Just one example a lot of projects that are to be executed never get off the ground because somebody has ran away with the money or the projects are poorly executed because the funds that are allocated to the project are never used for the project at all.
Looking Outside for Solutions.
Third world countries have to start being less dependent on foreign aid. One of the saddening things to me is each time that I look on TV and see some third World leading happily shaking arms shaking hands after coming into an agreement to receive foreign aid. Technologically the third world is lagging behind but their are things that third world countries know how to do and they should concentrate on doing just that. If they are good in agriculture then they should concentrate to be the best in agriculture and move forward from there. If they are good in planting producing raw materials then that is what they should be doing. Raw materials might include things like oil, gas,copper and other mineral resources.

Bureaucracy is another of the problems facing meaning that to get a simple thing like getting paid once the government hires you, you have to go through a lot of ministries and wait for periods that run about a year before you receive your first paycheck. Also pensioners, people who have retired from work have to wait at times for periods of up to five years before that can start receiving their pensions. There is something called chasing your documents. It involves you actually going from one office to another to get work done that should have been done without your presence.