If a country borrows to pay salaries today, how will it pay the workers tomorrow?
President of Chad, Idriss Déby has received a loan of $45m from France which he said will be used to pay the salaries of workers in the country.
According to an international media agency - Eye of Africa, the country will receive an additional loan of $11 million to support its health sector.
The loans were part of an agreement between Chad and France that was reached in 2017 at the National Development Program (PND).
Chad is one of the poorest countries in Africa with poverty levels in the country predicted by the World Bank to rise to 39.8% by 2019.
Corruption is a major issue in the country as political leaders have continued to milk the nation dry of its scarce resources. Chad was ranked 165 out of 180 in the 2018 Corruption Perception Index released by Transparency International.
In a statement released by Transparency International in 2014, the organization said:
“The government is perceived as largely ineffective in a context where insecurity and weak maintenance of the rule of law perpetuate systemic corruption. Major international governance indicators suggest persistent, widespread and endemic forms of corruption, permeating all sectors of Chadian society, with little evidence of progress made in anti-corruption in recent years.”
It is somewhat surprising how a country like Chad with a large number of resources including Uranium and gold, remains so poor.
Chad is ranked 135 out of 137 countries on the World Economic Forum Global competitive index for 2017-2018) and ranks 186 out of 189 countries on the Human Development Index.
The country is indebted to many nations, the World Bank and the IMF.
Idriss Déby has been the president of Chad since 1990.
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Header Photo Credit: Photo: Alwihda Info