CHAPTER FOUR: ECONOMIC GOVERNANCE AND MANAGEMENT __________________________________________________________________________ 345. The end of the period was, therefore, marked by the interventions of the Bretton Woods Institutions. Strict conventional stabilisation programmes and SAPs were ‘negotiated’ and implemented through various agreements. They were not successful in terms of either growth or the social welfare of the population. Social unrest followed and these soon became political demonstrations. The collapse of the Soviet regime during the same period only served to alienate the country further from socialist developmental policy and a single-party system. The National Sovereign Conference marked the end of this period and ushered in another. 346. The third period (1990 to the present) was known as the Democratic New Deal. It started at the conclusion of the National Sovereign Conference. The return to liberalism, and its related governance systems, became the basis of economic management. Then international aid arrived. It brought with it internal social and political cohesion and a new-found confidence in managing and mitigating social evils and for making the necessary efforts to establish macroeconomic stability. The economic governance of this period was marked not so much by the need for structural transformation as by the need to achieve economic stability in order to create the conditions for economic recovery. Day-to-day economic management ignored the importance of constructing a new economic vision to solve the basic problems of Benin’s economy. 347. The macroeconomic results were satisfactory in terms of economic growth, external trade, public finances and inflation. The new democratic framework helped enormously. However, this method of economic governance, based on routine management, soon ran out of steam after the devaluation of the CFA franc in 1994. The SAPs and he PRSP I could not resolve the country’s economic difficulties. Its vulnerability to both internal and external shocks and the weaknesses in the current style of economic management were clear, particularly in the decline in growth and the standard of living of the population. The issue of economic development and structural change boiled down to a frantic search for financial equilibrium, which then served as a developmental policy. 348. Although the country had championed compliance with the macroeconomic convergence criteria adopted in WAEMU, or at least most of them, its competitiveness continued to decline. It became increasingly incapable of playing its role as a transitional economy effectively. Benin’s heavy dependence on the world’s economy and on the economy of its powerful neighbour, Nigeria, did not help it to define, let alone implement, governance – except in terms of routine economic management with a short-term perspective. There was just no policy on structural change to assist in the construction of an alternative and long-term vision. It is here that we find another focus and core challenge for economic governance in Benin. This is to define and implement a vision, for the Benin of tomorrow, to achieve sustained and equitable growth, to reduce poverty, and to transform economic structures into an integrated national economy that is open at both regional and world levels and capable of resisting internal and external shocks. 131