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Thursday, Oct. 10, 1963 University Daily Kansam
Nassar's Hope Is To Double Income
CAIRO—(UPI)—The goal of President Gamal Abdel Nasser's development program for the United Arab Republic is the doubling of the national income every ten years. The key to the plan is the limiting of land ownership and the distributing of excess holdings among the peasants, the nationalizing of big business, industry and commerce, and the levying of a progressive tax on income.
income. Eleven years and two months after Nasser's overthrow of King Farouk the national income has more than doubled. The greater part of one-million acres, one sixth of Egypt arable land, has been turned over in small holdings to new owners. About 90 percent of private business has been nationalized.
The amount of progress made under Nasser's program is difficult to measure because only officiallypublished figures are available, and they sometimes are suspect. Because newspapers in the U.A.R. are government organs and because there is no organized opposition to the government, there has been no public questioning of Nassar's move toward socialism. Some American economists have expressed concern over the development of a near-communist style economy.
AN INVESTMENT guaranty agreement between the United States and the U.A.R. was signed last June as a move to encourage American firms to establish factories here, but the additional nationalization of 270 business firms in August has caused several American companies to revise their investment plans.
The nationalization program, with its nationalization of business and property of well-to-do Egyptians, has led many of them to leave the country, cutting into an already short supply of skilled administrators and workers. One effect, according to Western economists, has been a decline in the quality of such important Egyptian products as textiles.
The new security granted to
workers has had a major drawback from the standpoint of management. Labor laws virtually preclude the firing of an employee because of incompetence or automation.
NASSER SPELLED out his theory on socialism in the national charter adopted in June last year. "Socialism is the way to social freedom," he said. "Social freedom cannot be realized except by affording an equal opportunity for every citizen to obtain a fair share of the national wealth.
"This is not confined to the mere re-distribution of the national wealth among the citizens, but above all it requires the expansion of the base of this national wealth to meet the lawful rights of the working masses.
Nasser's application of Socialism started in earnest in the summer of 1961 with a major nationalization drive that put the state in control of about 4,000 business concerns worth $1.15 billion but the program had its roots in the revolution.
IN SEPTEMBER 1952, less than two months after the revolution, land ownership in this primarily agricultural country was limited to 200 acres per person. At the time, 50 per cent of the country's cultivated land was in the hands of half of one per cent of the population.
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