Earnings Boom

Despite some lowering of ransom levels across the latest negotiations, it has emerged that Somali pirates are earning as much as 157 times their country’s national average wage.

This naturallly makes piracy a highly lucrative business in this East African country, according to a new study.

A pirate can earn up to $79,000 (Dh290,129) a year — a stark contrast to the $500 average annual income in Somalia, according to a report titled “The Economics of Piracy: Pirate Ransoms and Livelihoods off the Coast of Somalia”.

See http://goo.gl/4YdK0 for full details of the study, which has some remarkably interesting graphical analysis.