1/5/2015 SOME PEOPLE HAVE DREAMS. READ ABOUT BOB MILLER https://linkedin/profile/view… Communities that are: • economically self-sufficient, • environmentally green, •food sustainable •socially sustainable •high-technology based in which families and their children •have the opportunity for good jobs, •share ownership in community businesses, •receive healthcare, •continue their education, •learn how to use computers, •participate in social & recreational activities, •receive job skills training •learn to live in a socially sustainable family, community and nation •have a chance to attend trade school or university so they are better prepared for their and their country’s future. PERSONAL NOTES BY GEORGE SABAT 1. The Dominican Republic $52 million affordable housing project I once had that dream, back in 2000, when I bid and won the tender for the construction of 4,000 affordable 53 square meter houses in the Dominican Republic at a unit cost of $13,000 dollars, including infrastructure. Financing for that $52 million dollars project was ultimately secured, and all that was left was to proceed with the implementation. Then 9/11 happened, the dream was shattered, and our main financial contributors, a Swiss insurance firm, withdrew their offer following the destruction of their offices in New York during the Towers attack. 2. The Nigeria affordable housing and adjacent factory parks project Once again, a few years after that event, I developed an affordable housing project, complete with adjacent factory parks in Nigeria, only to be told that what the country needed were houses for the rich, not for the poor. Twelve years later the country is under siege by Boko Haram, its social climate is shattered, and its economy threatened by the fall in oil prices. All because of such narrow views and outlooks. WILL SOME PEOPLE EVER LEARN? For the reader’s information, Nigeria is blessed with agriculture, wood and mineral products that are far more valuable than the oil that it presently extracts from the ground. The combined affordable housing and factory parks project that I had presented at that time was conceived to sustainably develop that wealth in order to provide the country with some protection against precisely what is happening today in Nigeria. Conclusion The above considerations should move our leaders in Lebanon to adopt a new BALANCED economic policy that should include, in addition to some careful debt management policy, some active support to agriculture, industry, and tourism, and not rely exclusively on hypothetical future oil resources or the proceeds from the banking and the real estate sectors as is the case presently.
Posted on: Wed, 07 Jan 2015 06:12:23 +0000
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