The transnational corporations and the politics of the international
institutions, especially the WTO, play an important role
The transnational corporations have a lot of controll
on the countries resources.
The ringing comes from some watch.
E.g. coffee, which is our most important agro-product,
is controlled by 4 transnational corporations: Nestlé, Cargill,
Procter Gambler and Kraft Food.
They manipulated the worls market price in the nineties,
so coffee fell more than 60%. So the producers lost
more than 60% of their income.
Which leades to grave consequences:
Nearly 150.000 families lost their property. At the same time
500.000 jobs were lost in the region.
Once you lose your land and work,
you find yourself in misery.
Chiquita Brands controlls the banana market;
the production and the export.
They drastically reduced the wages of the workers,
and introduced new employment contracts, where the workers
are not employees of the company, but co-partner. 35
Therefor they are dependent on the fluctuations of prices
on the market, in this case on banana prices.
Paramilitaries systematically expropriate land.
So transnational corporations can radically cut their costs,
control big shares of the market and multiply their profits.
Dole also belongs to the companies that control the market.
They have the hardest working conditions for women
and the lowest wages.
Furthermore there are local economic groups who act monopolistic.
They import and export goods and make illegal buisness,
so they can make bif profit and have higher prices.
They are often subsidiaries of big corporations,
and can porfit from subventions, the state pays to to
transnational corporations.
The situation is paradox: We have foreign depts of 90 Billion
and we subsidise transnational corporations.
Then they exploit our markets and use them as a bridge
for exports of the industrial nations,
which are also subsidised.