Buying?

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Buying?

While working in Zambia, I was allocated as Credit Expert a rather peculiar person. Nothing special about that, the peculiar persons abound in the world of International Experts and Consultants. Basically, if they were not peculiar, they would not be in the Service.

But that is not the point, the point is that you cannot foresee from which side of the candle the light is going to come out.

I had had my suspicions earlier when trying to get funds from rich countries for poor countries. Apparently you had to bribe both end of the deal if you wanted to broker any deal.

For rich countries supporting projects in poor countries, the bribes would take the form of seminars, duty travels here and there, consultancies for one of their protected baby, activities which will give a sense of importance and a not negligible side-income to the Services Responsible for allocating the funds.

The best period to get funds was either at the beginning of the financial year, when they had money, or at the end of the financial year when they were desperate when discovering that they had not spent the totality of their funds, a very major sin in Civil Service.

We were living on a big lie, we had to pretend that the poor countries had requested us, FAO Officers, to find funds for them. This was of course totally untrue. We were more realistically acting like fund brokers, trying to find sellers and buyers.

Sellers and buyers, well, that in theory should not be too difficult, the poor countries want funds, the rich countries want to give funds, our job should be a piece of cake. Our piece of cake was the 5% to 14% we took on any deal.

It was not a piece of cake;

The poor countries saw us mostly like a pebble in the engine. Once we were in into the Country and the Ministry, as we were uncontrolable, all kinds of unpleasant questions would come to day light where they have a tendency to smell.

Where were the duty cars of the Ministry?

Where were the salaries?

Why were Field Officers of the Ministry seldom found?.

How could one explain that nominations were so much connected to Family and Party links?

Why did the Ministry not issue Legal Tenders for its purchases?

Where did the 10.000 tons for fertilizers vanish?

Why were spare parts never foreseen?

Why did the tractors given by China always work on the farm of the VIPs?

The easiest way not to get these questions is to demand that the funds be given by the generous donators and received by the grateful recipients without these annoying in-between pebbles called International Field Experts.

As we had to pretend that the recipient Staff were devoted, honest, dedicated, able, it was a bit difficult to press the case for the inclusion of International Field Experts in the Project;

Not only that, the staff cost represent more than 60% of the costs of a project. Funds which the recipient country would prefer to see in their circuits rather than European bank accounts; Who can pretend that it is pleasant for a Ministry Director to have officially under his orders an FAO Expert who received ten to 50 times more per months than he does?

Our Credit Expert, enjoying an end of carrier stay in a pleasant country taught me that rule which I had not clearly seen:

<< in any deal, the basis of success is to find out who is buying and who is selling >>

Sounds obvious?

Well think of something simple : a farmer grows grass, another farmer breeds bulls, well the connection appears to be obvious, the grass growing farmer selling his grass to the bull owning farmer. Except that the bull breeding farmer will wonder why he does not have the grass and has to pay for it,a and the grass growing farmer wonders why he does not have bulls. Then the bull breeding farmer comes one day to the grass farmer and tells him that as from today he is not going to pay anything anymore as the grass farmer receives the bull manure for nothing.

If you are young and innocent, you try to sell to the poor country an agricultural Programme using as arguments that it will increase production, improve health, enrich farmers.

On the accounting blackboard, the Poor Department makes its additions:

A Development Programme represents

Vehicles, which is really the most wanted item.

Fuel and maintenance for the vehicles and any vehicle;

Photocopying machines (this was becoming one of the most wanted item)

Jobs which when allocated to locals meant power in terms of politics and family.

Travels to International Seminars (very profitable, especially as the Expatriate Expert has to write what the Local VIP will say).

Fellowships ( this means power)

Payment of minor expenditures foreseen in the National Budget but which will never materialize.

So the main question on any deal is to make sure

Who is buying

Who is selling

Take your case:

When you married, who was buying, who was selling?.

With a corollary we all know, a good deal must be a deal where both contractors are gaining and are satisfied.