I heard a statistic last month that I finally got around to confirming – if typing a few words into Google counts as confirming.
US economic growth (in real GDP) for 2010 was at 2.83%. No real surprise there. I’m guessing it felt about like that – or lower.
The People’s Republic of China (that’s the big one, usually painted red on the map, not the island one most of us call Taiwan) in contrast was at 10.3%. Ranking sixth highest in the world. Again, no real surprise there – we’re all pretty used to hearing (or reading on our cheap electronics) about the rising monster in the east the will one day consume us all. Although sixth seems a bit lower then all the hype would have us believe.
The spot of third highest was reserved for a special contender. Any guesses? Weighing in with 14.4% economic growth in 2010 – more then 4% higher then China and 3.2% higher than its next nearest competitor, India – that’s right, Paraguay.
Only Qatar and Singapore (ranked higher at 1 and 2 respectively) out grew, I would say, little, Paraguay, but by the company it’s keeping here that hardly seems appropriate.
Strong beef and cereal exports are cited as the reasoning for this anomalous (I can’t believe that’s a word, or that I’m using it) growth. Seems strange to me.
Until you consider two things. First how small the Paraguayan economy is to begin with. I’m not an economist, but I think that’s a factor. And second, the topic that won’t seem to go away in these parts: the soy.
Just walking and riding around, no measuring tape, no GPS, just plain old visual observation, I’d say it’s easy to see at least – the very least – a 20% increase in the amount of land used to cultivate soy (and wheat in the off season) in the 30 kilometer stretch of highway I travel regularly. This is land that wasn’t being used previously to plant these crops and this type of visual observation does nothing to account for increases in productivity on existing parcels.
It’s almost like watching an agricultural revolution in fast forward – or a train wreck in slow motion. Fascinating, but slightly terrifying.
A few people stand to benefit greatly (a strange concept I know) while the rest of the country enjoys a falsely inflated sense of prosperity (the President here referring to the country as an “economic champion”) and only the residual benefits of any actual growth. Something tells me that when things flatten out – sooner then later on any type of scale – any sense they’ll be feeling will be neither false nor residual, but very real and very immediate.
It’s a topic I see us revisiting.
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