News from Argentina, Pakistan and Nigeria

Tuesday's World Events   —   Posted on January 28, 2014

ARGENTINA – President implements new regulations: Argentines must file tax report on every web purchase they make

Argentine President Cristina Fernandez de Kirchner has introduced new restrictions on online shopping as part of efforts to stop foreign currency reserves from falling any further. (Argentina’s reserves of hard currencies dropped by 30% last year.)

Anyone buying items through international websites will now need to sign a declaration and produce it at a customs office, where the packages have to be collected. The procedure will need to be repeated for every new purchase.

Items imported through websites such as Amazon and eBay are no longer delivered to people’s home addresses. The parcels need to be collected from the customs office.

Argentines are only allowed to buy two international items annually, free of tax, up to a $25 total.  Beyond that, they must pay a 50% tax.

One resident of Buenos Aires, who gave his name as Martin, described the tax as “crazy.”  He told the BBC: “The real problem is that the item is received in customs now instead of at your home. Each time you go to customs, you need to spend three or four hours. I lose half a day’s work, which is unacceptable.”

Among the restrictions introduced more recently was a 35% tariff on credit card purchases made outside Argentina.

Despite the government’s efforts, Argentina’s reserves are now below $30billion – their lowest level since 2006.

President Cristina Kirchner is implementing the same socialist economic policies her late husband Néstor Carlos Kirchner did when he served as President of Argentina from 2003-2007.  Mrs. Kirchner was elected president after her husband died in 2007.

PAKISTAN – Polio workers shot dead in Karachi

PESHAWAR  [Three polio workers have been killed in the southern Pakistani city of Karachi, a day after authorities began a new vaccination drive (on Jan. 20).] …four [others] were shot and two more groups feared kidnapped, a World Health Organization official told NBC News.   

Armed men gunned down one group in the Qayyum Abad area of Pakistan’s biggest city Karachi as they worked to inoculate people against the potentially fatal disease, said the official, who did not wish to be named for fear of reprisals.  “Three members of the polio team, two of them women, died on the spot,” the official added. “Four other people were shot and injured in the city.” 

Two other polio teams working in different areas of Karachi are missing and feared kidnapped, the official said, adding that the WHO was in touch with the local Sindh government in an effort to bring them to safety.   

All of the teams were working as part of a United Nations health program to vaccinate the whole country against the highly infectious disease.

[No group has claimed responsibility, but the Taliban oppose the polio vaccination programs, which they see as a cover for international espionage.  [Islamic] religious clerics have claimed that vaccinations are a Western ploy to render their males infertile. Pakistan has witnessed a campaign of violence against health workers, who militants also accuse of being part of a Western plot to sterilize Muslims.]

Polio, which was virtually eliminated from the Western hemisphere in the second half of the 20th century, affects the nerves in the muscles necessary for breathing, causing respiratory difficulty and paralysis of the arms and legs. 

In November last year, 11 schoolteachers were kidnapped in the Bara subdivision of the Khyber tribal region as they administered the vaccine. They were later released.  In December three people working on polio vaccination teams were shot dead in northwest Pakistan, even though the vaccination program won the backing of a prominent [Islamic] religious seminary said to wield influence over Taliban groups.

According to the World Health Organization, 24 polio workers were killed last year in attacks on vaccination teams. The latest attack comes one day after health authorities in Sindh province, of which Karachi is the capital, began to inoculate 7.6 million children as part of a nationwide vaccination campaign. 

NIGERIA – Country becomes 38th in Africa to criminalize homosexuality

Background

ARGENTINA 

ECONOMIC CRISIS: CAUSES AND CURES Jim Saxton (R-NJ), Vice Chairman Joint Economic Committee U.S. Congress June 2003

• In 1998, Argentina entered what turned out to be a four-year depression, during which its economy shrank 28 percent.
• Argentina’s experience has been cited as an example of the failure of free markets and fixed exchange rates, among other things.
• The evidence does not support those views. Rather, bad economic policies converted an ordinary recession into a depression.
• Three big tax increases in 2000-2001 discouraged growth, and meddling with the monetary system in mid 2001 created fear of currency devaluation.
• As a result, confidence in Argentina’s government finances evaporated.
• In a series of blunders that made matters even worse, from December 2001 to early 2002, succeeding governments undermined property rights by freezing bank deposits; defaulting on the government’s foreign debt in a thoughtless manner; ending the Argentine peso’s longstanding link to the dollar; forcibly converting dollar deposits and loans into Argentine pesos at unfavorable rates; and voiding contracts.
• Achieving sustained long-term economic growth will involve re-establishing respect for property rights.

PAKISTAN

• Pakistan is one of only three countries where polio remains endemic and is indeed on the rise, due in part to this militant resistance to polio mass vaccination campaigns. Nigeria and Afghanistan are the others, but WHO officials have stressed that progress is being made in these countries.
• Earlier this month India declared itself polio-free, three years after its last reported case - a landmark in the global battle against the disease, and largely due to a massive and sustained vaccination campaign.  (from a Jan. 21 BBCNews report)