Elfenbenskysten var engang det økonomiske kraftfelt i verdens fattigste region – Vestafrika. Nu er alt forandret og genopbygningen skal igang Since the contested presidential election in November, Ivory Coast’s economy has been in chaos. With former President Laurent Gbagbo’s arrest, Ivorians are hoping the recovery can begin. In a country where nearly one in two Ivorians live on less than a dollar a day, the current crisis has left many out of work – and foreign investment has dried up. With the EU lifting its restrictions on the country’s ports, exports are expected to resume within the next few days. Gbagbo was able to defy world opinion and hold onto power after his defeat in a November 28 election to Alassane Ouattara because he enjoyed widespread support in the mainly Christian south, winning almost 46 percent of the national vote. Now Ouattara, a former International Monetary Fund director, inherits a banking system closed by four months of international isolation, a cocoa industry in danger of losing its dominance of the global market and a treasury (statskasse) that defaulted (misligeholdt/gik fallit) on a 2,3 billion US dollar bond (gældsbevis/obligation). Shifting the 400.000-plus tons of cocoa in Abidjan and San Pedro will bring in some much needed cash, even if bean quality is likely to be much reduced after two months of storage in tropical conditions. Cocoa futures in both the US and the UK shrugged off Monday’s news of Gbagbo’s capture. Ouattara has also asked commercial banks to re-open, so that workers can draw salaries and people can start buying and selling goods again. Kilde: www.worldbank.org
