Lothar
Maier
Raw
Materials Supply
German
Bundestag, March 5, 2020, Plenarprotokoll 19/149, pp. 18643-18644
[Lothar Maier is an Alternative für
Deutschland Bundestag member from the western German state of Baden-Württemberg.
He is a retired economics professor. He here presents an AfD motion (Drucksache
19/17525) concerning German raw materials supply.]
Right
honorable Herr President. Ladies and gentlemen.
In this
debate, we are speaking of German industry’s mid and long term supply of raw
materials, and specifically of those which we must import from non-European
countries. Raw materials supply generally becoming a greater problem was not
foreseen ten years ago. The economy was accustomed to be able to purchase any
necessary material in sufficient quantity on the world market. Not even one raw
material was actually scarce.
Today
we must acknowledge that ever more important raw materials are ever more
difficult to procure. Rare earths, diverse metals, minerals, sources of energy
and even certain agricultural raw materials. The reason is not the exhaustion
of raw material reserves but the centralization of the market. Large consumers,
primarily China, but also the USA, France and Great Britain, have secured
monopolistic hold on important sources of minerals and determine the price.
Worthy colleagues, ja, with raw materials,
power politics is being pursued. Who would have thought it?
Late,
but not too late, the Bundesverband der Deutschen Industrie has pointed to the
threatening dangers in its Berlin raw materials declaration and admonished the
Federal government to take resolute action. Sadly, this alarm was unable to
waken the Federal government from its deep slumber. There, one appears to
continue to believe that the market will regulate all. It does that, but with
consequences other than those dreamt of by this government.
There
is no coherent German raw materials policy to speak of. China has secured for
itself not only raw material reserves in Africa, South America and Asia, in
which not only the deposits are brought under control but to which is also
delivered the necessary infrastructure like streets, railroads, harbors and
airports for complete transportation and processing. German investments in this
sector remain at best selective and uncoordinated. They will not be supported
diplomatically by the Federal government and adjusted to a development concept
for the target country, nor will the possibilities of technical cooperation be
employed for supportive measures, primarily in the area of infrastructure but
also for the training requirements for qualified skilled labor. TZ [Technical Cooperation]
and private investments run along unrelated to one another and often the TZ
pursues goals which seem to originate from another world.
The
Development Ministry’s budget of 10 billion euros allows it to finance the
infrastructure and training projects of many significant private investments in
the target countries which could economically advance those countries. Instead,
a large portion of the TZ budget for small and micro projects is squandered by
a highly dubious setting of goals, meaningless for development policy. As an
example, I name here 170,000 euros for gender-sensitive, male employment in Nicaragua,
67,000 euros for the improvement of the sexual and reproductive health of youth
in Bolivia’s District 8 –
Uwe Kekeritz (Greens): Describe the
case for once! What is the background?
–
234,000 euros for the integral and gender-based promotion of organized, small
farm families in Uganda, etc., etc. If such projects help anyone at all, it is
the employees of these German NGOs who implement them.
What
needs doing in foreign economic and development policy are the three measures
we are presenting which correspond equally to German interests as well as to
those of the target countries.
First:
The coordination of German raw materials and development policy by the creation
of an office of Federal commissioner for raw materials policy, its duties
consisting of the bundling and linking of national initiatives for the securing
of raw materials supply.
Second:
The founding of a German raw materials company from an association of private
firms which organizes the production and stock-piling of strategically
important raw materials and which guides its work. There must be no, or only a
very limited, public financial participation.
And
third: A new orientation of the Technical Cooperation to the writing not of
donated investments which fail as soon as the foreign sponsor has stopped
financing the goal, but investments in mutual interests with a long term
perspective. The goal of such a cooperation cannot alone consist only of the
production and export of simple raw materials, but should also include the organized
guidance of the initial processing stages in the target land and supportive
measures for the German economy’s substantial investment in the partner
countries.
Let’s
do something unusual! Let’s do something useful for all!
Thank
you.
[Translated by Todd Martin]
