{"id":8770,"date":"2015-09-30T12:34:04","date_gmt":"2015-09-30T16:34:04","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/jimbovard.com\/blog\/?p=8770"},"modified":"2015-09-30T12:34:04","modified_gmt":"2015-09-30T16:34:04","slug":"world-bank-ravages-the-third-world-30th-anniv","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/jimbovard.com\/blog\/2015\/09\/30\/world-bank-ravages-the-third-world-30th-anniv\/","title":{"rendered":"World Bank Ravages the Third World – 30th Anniv."},"content":{"rendered":"
\"world-bank-wrecking-ball-image-for-blog-9-30-2015_edited-1\"<\/a>

Rehabbing the World Bank<\/p><\/div>\n

This is the 30th anniversary of my first attack on the World Bank in the national media. Reposted below are some of my attacks on the Bank from the Wall Street Journal<\/em> and New York Times<\/em>.\u00a0 I discuss in Public Policy Hooligan<\/a> how I nabbed some of the confidential documents exposed below. The Bank continues propping up tyrants and bankrolling destructive economic policies around the globe.\u00a0 It should have been abolished decades ago.<\/p>\n

Wall Street Journal<\/strong>
\nSeptember 30, 1985
\nBehind the Words at the World Bank<\/a>
\nBy James Bovard<\/p>\n

As some 9,000 interested parties gather in Seoul this week\u00a0for the World Bank’s annual meeting, accolades will be heard\u00a0for the bank’s new awareness of the private sector, and its\u00a0crucial role in spurring international development. But what\u00a0changes the bank has made in recent years don’t add up to an\u00a0improvement.<\/p>\n

Bank President A.W. Clausen often praises private
\nenterprise these days, but the vast majority of World Bank
\nloans still go to strengthen government bureaucracies and
\nreinforce their control over the economy. Loans to communist
\ncountries alone have increased fourfold since 1981 and will
\nconstitute 13.4% of the bank’s 1985 lending. The bank has
\nbeen the driving force behind the nationalization of oil and
\nnatural gas throughout the Third World. And all the while, it
\nhas shown too little concern for human-rights violations in
\nits projects.<\/p>\n

The bank has given the government of Indonesia more than
\n$600 million to remove — sometimes forcibly — several
\nmillion people from the densely populated island of Java and
\nresettle them on comparatively barren islands elsewhere in
\nIndonesia. Despite reports of violence, the bank continues
\nlauding the project as “the largest voluntary migration” in
\nrecent history.<\/p>\n

The London-based Anti-Slavery Society for Human Rights
\nreported to the United Nations that at least one supposedly
\nvacant island being given to the migrants was already
\ninhabited — and that the Indonesian army cleared the island
\nby setting the original inhabitants’ crops on fire. Indonesia
\nis sending hundreds of thousands of migrants to the island of
\nIrian Jayaand the island’s original inhabitants claim they
\nare being driven from their lands by the Indonesian army. The
\nIndonesian government is also resettling Javanese on the
\nisland of East Timor — which the army seized in 1975.
\nAccording to a 1983 Washington Post account quoting relief
\nworkers, an estimated 150,000 of the island’s 700,000
\ninhabitants were killed or left to die of starvation in the
\nensuing strife.<\/p>\n

The transmigration project is supposed to make the
\nmigrants more productive. But the project mainly moves poor
\nfarmers from small amounts of good land to large amounts of
\nnearly worthless land. The government often fails to honor
\nits promises to provide water, roads, schools and tools. It
\ncosts about $6,000 to move each family, yet most families
\nthat are moved end up making little or no income from their
\nnew habitats, and many who previously supported themselves in
\nJava have gone on welfare.<\/p>\n

The Polonoroeste project in Brazil is a similar fiasco.
\nThe bank has poured almost half a billion dollars into a
\nscheme to move landless farmers into cleared areas in the
\nAmazon tropical forests. But about all the project succeeded
\nin doing was building a road and encouraging tens of
\nthousands of people to move to an area with terrible farm
\nland and almost no infrastructure. The project has
\npointlessly cut down hundreds of square miles of rain forests
\nand engendered much violence between the new arrivals and the
\nindigenous Indians. The bank specified in the original loan
\nagreement with Brazil that the Indians’ rights must be
\nrespected, but then did nothing when the Indians’ lands were
\ntrampled. After two years’ uproar by U.S. environmental
\ngroups and extensive congressional hearings, the bank has
\ntemporarily stopped funding the project.<\/p>\n

To its credit, the bank has contributed funds to help
\nprivatize a few government corporations in Africa and Asia.
\nBut at the same time the bank is spending a few million
\ndollars to resurrect private companies that previous bank
\nloans often helped nationalize, it is pouring billions into
\nmaintaining state-owned enterprises (SOEs) throughout the
\nThird World.<\/p>\n

The bank’s latest kick is “public sector improvement
\nloans” — basically, transferring the cost of socialist
\ninefficiency from the recipient government to the World
\nBank’s donors. Morocco received $200 million for “actions to
\nimprove public investment planning and the functioning of the
\npublic enterprise sector.” Chile received $11 million to help
\nthe government “orient and guide the process of resource
\nallocations” among SOEs. Ecuador received $14 million “to
\nincrease the public sector’s contribution to economic growth
\nby improving the management of key public enterprises.”<\/p>\n

The bank’s biggest socialistic binge is occurring in
\nenergy projects. Most World Bank energy loans either displace
\nforeign private investment or deter the development of
\nprivate companies in recipient countries. World Bank 1985
\nenergy loans include $92 million to the Yugoslavian
\ngovernment for oil and gas exploration, $233 million to the
\nPakistani government oil companies, $248 million to the
\nIndian government for coal-mine development, and $110 million
\nto the Bangladesh government for natural gas exploration.
\nThese loans do nothing to increase development — but only
\nadd to the size of Third World governments, breeding more
\nbureaucrats and fewer entrepreneurs.<\/p>\n

The biggest change at the bank since Mr. Clausen took over
\nin 1981 is the huge increase in lending to communist
\ncountries. Since 1981, China, Romania, Ethiopia, Yugoslavia
\nand Hungary have received more than $6 billion — including
\nalmost $2 billion in 1985. Even though China has easy access
\nto commercial credit, Mr. Clausen favors doubling World Bank
\nlending to China from the current $1 billion a year. Nor is
\nWorld Bank financing being used to pry China away from
\nsocialism — the bank gave China a $47 million zero-interest,
\n50-year loan for the development of its state farms.<\/p>\n

The bank also is busy subsidizing America’s trade
\ncompetitors. South Korea received $556 million in World Bank
\nloans this past year for purposes like providing “much needed
\ncapital for economically and financially viable industrial
\nprojects” and enhancing rail capacity in the Seoul industrial
\ncorridor. South Korea is better managed than most World Bank
\nborrowers — but, like most borrowers, it has long had easy
\naccess to commercial credit and need not rely on the bank’s
\nsubsidies.<\/p>\n

The bank, like most international organizations, has tried
\nto use the African famine to drum up support to boost its own
\nbudget. Though much of Mr. Clausen’s rhetoric is devoted to
\nAfrica’s dire straits, barely 10% of the bank’s 1985 loans
\nhave gone to sub-Saharan Africa. And the biggest beneficiary
\nwas Ethiopia.<\/p>\n

This past year, much to the bank’s embarrassment, its loan
\nvolume fell 7%. A classified internal World Bank memo late
\nlast year outlined plans to relax all types of loan
\nrequirements in order to spur borrower demand. The bank
\nsubsequently abolished its one-quarter percent “handling fee”
\non loans. The bank currently has $17 billion in unlent cash
\nreserves.<\/p>\n

Despite the bank’s inability to meet its loan goals, Mr.
\nClausen wants to expand. Earlier this year he said he hoped
\nto request a $40 billion increase in callable capital
\n(existing total: $55.8 billion), though he may be retreating
\nfrom that goal now. Whatever, Mr. Clausen wants the bank to
\nhave a larger role in managing the international debt crisis
\n— which would be akin to appointing Mrs. O’Leary’s cow chief
\nof the Chicago Fire Department.<\/p>\n

Mr. Clausen and his predecessor, Robert McNamara, beat the
\nbushes to encourage more commercial lending to Third World
\ngovernments. Now we have a debt problem that is indeed
\nserious, and foolish American banks are in trouble. But if
\nthe U.S. wants to bail out its banks it should give them the
\nmoney directly and not launder the handouts through the World
\nBank and Third World governments.<\/p>\n

Mr. Clausen’s term as bank president expires in mid-1986.
\nThe U.S., as the bank’s largest shareholder, has effective
\npower to appoint a new bank president. One hopes the Reagan
\nadministration will find a replacement, but in the meantime
\nthe funding issue must be addressed.<\/p>\n

The bank can sustain a lending level of $13 billion a year
\nsimply by relying on its principal repayment and interest
\nearnings. Its 1985 lending amounts to $14.4 billion. That’s
\nmore than enough to cover good projects to well-managed
\ncountries that do not have access to commercial credit. A
\npoorer bank would be a wiser bank — and a better friend to
\nthe Third World.<\/p>\n

—tagline: Mr. Bovard is a Washington-based freelance journalist.<\/p>\n

******<\/p>\n

Wall Street Journal<\/strong>
\nSeptember 23, 1987
\nWorld Bank Confidentially Damns Itself <\/a>
\nBy James Bovard<\/p>\n

The World Bank is preparing to ask the U.S. for an
\nadditional $10 billion in cash and guarantees to expand its
\nlending. The bank claims that it must boost its lending in
\norder to encourage market-oriented reforms in Third World
\ncountries. But the bank’s own confidential reports reveal
\nthat its structural-adjustment program has been a dismal
\nfailure.<\/p>\n

World Bank President Barber Conable and other bank
\nofficials are now preaching a private-sector gospel,
\nstressing that the private sector is the key to economic
\ngrowth and a strong future. They are right on this score —
\nand it is good that someone at the bank finally recognizes
\nthe true source of economic growth.<\/p>\n

But every time the bank loudly praises the private sector,
\nit silently damns its own record. The bank financed and
\napproved the massive expansion of government power throughout
\nthe Third World. A 1987 World Bank study by Keith Marsden and
\nTherese Belot implied that World Bank aid and other foreign
\naid was a major culprit in the nationalization of African
\neconomies: “Foreign loans have reinforced the heavy public
\nsector bias of African investments.”<\/p>\n

The bank’s flagship structural-adjustment lending (SAL)
\nprogram was launched in 1980 to encourage policy reform. SALs
\nhave allowed the bank to greatly increase its loans in the
\n1980s.<\/p>\n

But, SALs are often used to perpetuate government control
\nrather to induce pro-market reforms. A 1986 confidential
\nstudy surveyed 10 countries that received SALs and concluded
\nthat only two countries substantially reduced their budget
\ndeficits. The report noted that “not infrequently,” World
\nBank officers were more interested in preparing new loans
\nthan in supervising the structural-adjustment process.<\/p>\n

What have SALs gone for? In the Ivory Coast, the SAL was
\nused to pay the debts of floundering government enterprises.
\nIn Senegal, the SAL bankrolled the budgets of
\ngovernment-owned agricultural companies. In Pakistan, bank
\naid was used to “rationalize” state-owned companies, but
\nauditors concluded that efficiency had not been increased and
\nthat the companies are still inefficient and losing money.<\/p>\n

The 1986 report noted, “Under most of the 15 SALs in the
\n10 countries, restrictions placed on the use of SAL funds
\nwere minimal.” It appears that most of the money was used to
\nconduct business as usual, thus perpetuating government
\nwaste. The World Bank encourages recipient governments to
\nspend SALs for export subsidies — which only perpetuates
\ndistortions in the domestic economy.<\/p>\n

The bank has a very generous measure of success of its
\nSALs. The bank officially judged Bolivia “to have complied
\nwith the spirit of the Loan Agreement” in the early 1980s,
\nthough bank auditors disagreed, concluding that the SAL “was
\nunsuccessful; reforms were minimal and short-lived.”<\/p>\n

The SALs’ timid efforts to require reform are often
\ndefeated because governments can easily acquire foreign aid
\nelsewhere. The 1986 bank report noted: “The availability of
\nalternative financial sources, often without strict
\nconditionality [including other loans from the World Bank],
\nreduces the need for the bank to provide a SAL. . . . In
\nJamaica and Senegal, availability of substantial foreign aid
\nled governments to decide initially that it was not necessary
\nto devalue or to substantially reduce budget deficits.”<\/p>\n

A 1985 confidential bank report by leading development
\nexpert Elliot Berg and consultant Alan Batchelder concluded:
\n“The SAL’s seemingly hard and all-encompassing conditionality
\nis largely illusory . . . the Bank must shrink from the
\nultimate sanction, cancellation. Cessation of disbursements
\nis too strong a response by the Bank to banal acts of
\nnon-performance. In the one case where it was done (Senegal)
\nthe SAL was replaced by new [World Bank] credits.”<\/p>\n

SALs often neglect key problems because of World Bank fear
\nof offending the recipient government. One bank official who
\nhas worked extensively with SALs complained that the Mexican
\nstructural adjustment loan made no mention of imposing limits
\non corruption or on capital flight — two of Mexico’s biggest
\nproblems. The bank reportedly did not even push Mexico to
\ninstall a decent auditing system to control graft.<\/p>\n

Yugoslavia received a $275 million structural-adjustment
\nloan in 1983 to improve “the efficiency and competitiveness
\nof the economy.” But the Yugoslavian economy today is a
\nshambles, with hyperinflation, high unemployment and
\noppressive debt. A 1987 World Bank report concluded that
\n“real interest rates are still negative, and the intended
\nreforms related to financial discipline, investment criteria
\nand foreign exchange and credit allocation are not yet in
\nplace.”<\/p>\n

Most bank project loans also fail to spur reform. A 1985
\nbank audit report concluded that, though most recipient
\ngovernments promise to make reforms when borrowing bank
\nmoney, the promised reforms are rarely made, and that “a
\ntypical reaction by the Bank” to noncompliance has been to
\nconclude that additional loans are necessary to further
\nencourage policy reform.<\/p>\n

The bank recently gave Jamaica $34 million to reform its
\ngovernment sugar estates, the latest in a series of loans
\nsince 1978. The bank’s press release claimed, “Since the
\nearly 1980s, the government has been implementing a major
\nrationalization of the state-owned sugar industry as part of
\nits broader economic adjustment effort in order to make it
\nfinancially viable.” Yet, a 1985 confidential World Bank
\nreport on Jamaica concluded, “Despite major effort, little
\nprogress has been made at improving management of the
\ngovernment’s sugar estates.”<\/p>\n

Some foreign-aid advocates imply that a wave of
\nprivatization is sweeping the Third World. But a recent 1987
\nbank study on privatization “found few instances of formal
\nliquidations in the 28 countries reviewed. . . . Sales of
\nlarge numbers of enterprises are also few, occurring in only
\ntwo countries, Chile and Bangladesh.”<\/p>\n

The bank cannot force governments to reform because the
\nbank is often more eager to lend than Third World governments
\nare to borrow. A 1987 bank audit report concluded that some
\nbank projects suffered from “an unseemly pressure to lend,”
\nand that Third World governments have been pressured by bank
\nofficers to borrow money for projects that later turned out
\nto be fiascos.<\/p>\n

As more and more countries receive SALs, the bank will
\nlikely be able to find a few success stories. Thailand and
\nTurkey received SALs after they had begun pro-market reforms.
\nBut the vast majority of SAL recipients continue to have
\nself-defeating economic policies before, during, and after
\ntheir SALs.<\/p>\n

As the 1985 Berg-Batchelder study concluded: “Why don’t
\ngovernments change the policies that are holding back their
\ndevelopment? . . . What has money got to do with all this
\nanyway? Why do external donors have to pay money to induce
\nLDC governments to do things that we (and presumably they)
\nbelieve will make them better off?”<\/p>\n

The vast majority of pro-market reforms do not require
\nforeign cash to implement. If governments would only respect
\nthe lives and property of their citizens, allow people to
\nstart their own businesses, and roll back bureaucratic
\ncontrol, then countries could boost their living standards
\nwithout boosting their debt load.<\/p>\n

If the bank is serious about providing capital only to
\ncountries following productive economic policies, how can it
\njustify giving a single dollar to Ethiopia? The bank recently
\nlent Ethiopia $14 million for, among other things,
\n“institutional development of the Ministry of Agriculture.”
\nBut the ministry is heavily involved in the government’s
\nmurderous villagization program, whereby the Marxist rulers
\nare trying to force 33 million peasants (three-quarters of
\nthe population) to move their homes and live in
\ngovernment-supervised villages. This is economic development?<\/p>\n

If the U.S. does pledge an additional $10 billion for the
\nbank, one of the major beneficiaries could be the Soviet
\nUnion, which is currently seeking access to bank-subsidized
\nloans. Barber Conable stated last fall that he would be
\n“happy” to consider Soviet membership, and Undersecretary of
\nState John Whitehead said in March that the U.S. “would like
\nto see the Soviet Union become a member of” the World Bank,
\nthe IMF and GATT.<\/p>\n

Has the World Bank helped the Third World? Some countries
\nhave benefited — but most of the long-term aid recipients
\nhave ended up with heavy debt loads, swollen public sectors
\nand overvalued exchange rates. Instead of spurring reform,
\nmost aid has simply allowed governments to perpetuate their
\nmistakes.<\/p>\n

If the bank has not straightened out Third World economic
\npolicies after handing out over a hundred billion dollars,
\nwhy should we trust it with more money?<\/p>\n

*************<\/p>\n

Wall Street Journal<\/strong><\/p>\n

Tuesday, June 21, 1988
\nWorld Bank Unit’s Lip Service to Private Sector <\/a>
\nBy James Bovard<\/p>\n

Treasury Secretary James Baker lauds the International
\nFinance Corporation, the private-sector affiliate of the
\nWorld Bank, as “the flagship of the private sector in the
\nThird World.” The World Bank is lobbying Congress for an
\nadditional $14 billion U.S. commitment to expand World Bank
\nlending, and the IFC is seen as a model for what an expanded
\nWorld Bank could do. But many, if not most, IFC loans go to
\ngovernment-controlled enterprises and the IFC has a growing
\nenthusiasm for investing in Communist countries.<\/p>\n

According to Sir William Ryrie, the IFC’s chief executive
\nofficer under titular head Barber Conable, “The main
\ninitiative and drive and the bulk of the capital required
\n[for IFC investments] must come from the private sector.”
\nYet, the IFC invested $17 million in an automobile plant in
\nChina in 1985 where the only private-sector involvement was a
\nstake of less than 10% held by Peugeot. Private foreign
\ninvestment in China has nosedived in very recent years due to
\nincreased Chinese government restrictions on foreign
\ninvestors. Yet, according to Toerstein Stephansen, director
\nof the IFC’s Asian\/Pacific branch, “Money is available and we
\ncan, each year, provide up to $100 million in investment to
\nprojects in China.”<\/p>\n

The largest recipient of IFC loans is Yugoslavia, with
\nalmost $400 million in such aid. Yet Yugoslavia’s private
\nsector has fallen, according to Radio Free Europe, from 27%
\nof gross national product in 1962 to 5% in 1986.<\/p>\n

The IFC has invested heavily in the Yugoslavian banking
\nsystem, and thus is likely eventually to show losses from
\nlast year’s banking collapse, as well as from the nation’s
\ninflation rate of as much as 200%. (Until recently,
\nYugoslavian government controls held interest rates on loans
\nat rates far below the inflation rate).<\/p>\n

Despite the IFC’s purported commitment to private
\nenterprise, it recently invested $3.2 million to help set up
\na new government-controlled bank in Hungary to make loans to
\nstate-owned enterprises and cooperatives — and this at a
\ntime when the Hungarian government levied heavy new taxes on
\nthe limited private enterprises that do exist.<\/p>\n

The IFC is eager to begin lending to Poland, as a March 24
\nconfidential project analysis sent to the chairman of the
\nIFC’s Investment Committee shows. In it, Douglas Gustafson,
\nthe IFC’s director of investment for Europe and the Middle
\nEast, says of a proposed $18 million loan to a Polish fruit
\nand vegetable cooperative:<\/p>\n

“Given the continuing uncertainties about how and when the
\nIMF may [give aid to Poland,] there is a real danger that the
\nPolish authorities may become frustrated with the
\ninternational financial institutions. IFC has the possibility
\nto act as a bridge during this interim period, by providing a
\nrelatively small loan and demonstrating the good intent of
\nthe World Bank Group. . . . A fast, early investment by IFC
\nwould have enormous effect on IFC’s standing in Poland, would
\ndemonstrate IFC to be a flexible, responsible institution and
\nwould increase the number of investment possibilities in the
\npipeline. IFC would achieve a great deal of good will by an
\nearly investment.”<\/p>\n

The World Bank wants to be loved by its bankrupt Communist
\nborrowers — and also wants to maximize the “investment
\npossibilities” for increased World Bank handouts and growth.
\nPoland has a $40 billion debt that it will never repay — yet
\nthe World Bank is worried about winning Poland’s “good will.”<\/p>\n

To maintain an appearance of private-sector orientation,
\nIFC loans are prohibited from being guaranteed by
\ngovernments. Yet, the Polish loan would be guaranteed by Bank
\nHandlowy, which is fully owned by the Polish Ministry of
\nFinance. The IFC skirts this requirement by claiming that
\nBank Handlowy is a “commercial bank,” and notes in the
\nproject analysis: “This approach is similar to that adopted
\nin Yugoslavia and Hungary.” The investment is justified
\npartly on the analysis of the borrower’s net worth, which the
\nIFC calculates based on an exchange rate of 175 zlotys to the
\ndollar — even though the black-market exchange rate in
\nPoland is roughly 1,300 to the dollar.<\/p>\n

Outside of the East Bloc, many IFC projects look like
\ninternational versions of Urban Development Action Grants,
\nfunding activities that could occur regardless of IFC
\nhandouts. The IFC chipped in $6 million for a Ramada
\nRenaissance Hotel in Grenada, $7 million for a Sheraton Hotel
\nin Fiji, $3.6 million for the expansion of an
\nIntercontinental Hotel in Kenya. As with UDAGs, projects
\noften are justified by the number of “jobs created.” An IFC
\npress release claimed that a $28 million IFC-supported P.T.
\nBali Holiday Village resort in Indonesia would create “some
\n300 direct jobs.” But, since the average Indonesian
\nper-capita income is $550, spending almost $90,000 per new
\njob is not quite a bargain.<\/p>\n

IFC loans often simply underwrite partnerships between
\nmultinational corporations and Third World governments. The
\nIFC lent $9 million to Yemen Hunt Oil Co. in 1985 to build a
\nrefinery, in a project that also received a $20 million
\nguarantee from the U.S. Overseas Private Investment
\nCorporation. Hunt Oil Co. has been in partnership with the
\nYemen Arab Republic since 1981 — and it is hard to see how
\nproviding an IFC cash injection long after the partnership
\nbegan achieved anything.<\/p>\n

The IFC claims that 41 of its 92 investments last year
\nwere in companies that were entirely private-sector. Yet,
\nmany of the companies the IFC claims are completely private
\nhave an extensive government role. In Zambia, the IFC says
\nZambia Cashew Co. and the Gwembe Valley Development Co. are
\ncompletely private, but according to Cecilia Momeka of the
\nZambian Embassy in Washington, the government owns 51% of
\nevery corporation in the country. In Togo, the IFC claims
\nthat an $850,000 loan went to a private steel mill, but the
\nmill actually is owned by the government and leased for 10
\nyears to a private individual. Moreover, as part of the
\nleasing agreement, Togo promised to keep a 41% tariff on
\nimported steel.<\/p>\n

In Argentina, the IFC claims that loans went to three
\ntotally private entities in Argentina, but the Argentine
\ngovernment owns stock in all three. In Ghana, the IFC claims
\nan oil-exploration program it is helping is private, but the
\nGhanaian government owns substantial shares in the
\ncorporation. And in China, the IFC claims that China
\nInvestment Co. is completely private-but the company will be
\ninvesting in joint projects between the government of China
\nand foreign investors, which the Chinese government will
\nlargely control. In Zimbabwe, the IFC lent $10 million to udc
\nLtd., a Zimbabwean finance organization, for lending to
\nZimbabwean businesses. The IFC classifies this project as
\nstrictly private-sector. However, every loan that udc Ltd.
\nmakes must first be approved by Zimbabwe’s Ministry of
\nIndustry and Technology or Ministry of Trade and Commerce.<\/p>\n

Some IFC loans may actually increase political control
\nover the economy. The IFC has provided five loans to the
\nPanafrican Paper Mills in Kenya since 1970. As part of the
\nKenyan government’s contributions to helping the
\npublic-private entity, it sharply increased tariffs on
\nimported paper. The results looked good on Panafrican’s
\nbalance sheets but clobbered the Kenyan people with higher
\npaper prices.<\/p>\n

The IFC’s 1985-89 five-year plan calls for a 7% annual
\nincrease in loan-investment volume, currently at $1.1
\nbillion. To meet its growth targets, the IFC is planning to
\nincrease its investments in South Korea at a time when the
\nprivate sector is doing just fine on its own. South Korea has
\nalready attracted a flood of foreign private investment
\nwithout the IFC, and the IFC is in Korea largely to boost its
\nloan and equity investments and to snare easy profits.<\/p>\n

The IFC, along with the World Bank in general, is based on
\nthe idea that a handout provides a stronger incentive than
\nsheer necessity to adopt sound economic policies. Many
\neconomists in recipient countries disagree.<\/p>\n

Martin Tardos, director of the Hungarian Academy of
\nScience’s Institute of Economics, notes: “The World Bank
\nmoney has made life easier for the Hungarian government and
\nmade it possible to avoid deep market-oriented change. The
\nWorld Bank was not setting conditions for real changes and it
\naccepted the rhetoric for the reality.” In Poland, private
\ncitizens have vast dollar reserves saved up in their
\nmattresses. Yet because they have no security for their
\ninvestments, they don’t invest in Polish companies, as Jan
\nVanous of Planecon Consultants in Washington observes. It is
\nabsurd to inject dollars into a country when its own people
\nhave no faith in the economic system.<\/p>\n

The IFC, like the World Bank in general, has failed in its
\neffort to buy economic reform from Third World and Eastern
\nEuropean politicians. Necessity is still the best incentive
\nfor sound economic reform. Insofar as the World Bank reduces
\nthe pressure of necessity without securing real reform, it
\nhas betrayed the citizens of the Third World and East Europe.<\/p>\n

*****************
\nThe New York Times <\/strong><\/a>July 30, 1989, Sunday,<\/p>\n

HEADLINE: BUSINESS FORUM: THE WORLD BANK;
\nFostering America’s Interests Abroad . . . But It Lends to Oppressive Regimes<\/a><\/p>\n

BYLINE: By JAMES BOVARD; James Bovard is the author of ”The Farm\u00a0 Fiasco.”<\/p>\n

Barber Conable, the former New York Congressman, took over the World Bank in
\nl986 promising to reorganize and redirect it. But, after three years, little has
\nchanged and the bank, the largest multilateral institution in the world,
\ncontinues financing regimes that oppress people and mangle economies.
\nThe New York Times, July 30, 1989<\/p>\n

Last September, Congress approved a 4 billion pledge of callable capital to
\nallow the bank to borrow more money and rapidly increase its lending. Mr.
\nConable boasts that the bank committed over $20 billion to the third world and
\nEast Europe in l988, and World Bank officials have already spoken of lending up
\nto $24 billion in l989.<\/p>\n

Unfortunately, the bank is setting new lending records by providing more and
\nmore capital to less and less creditworthy regimes. Eight nations have ceased
\nrepaying World Bank loans, and the bank has set up a special program to give new
\nmoney to governments to repay their old loans.<\/p>\n

South Korea continues to receive extensive World Bank aid, even though it is
\na major industrial power with a huge manufacturing trade surplus. Yet when Mr.
\nConable was lobbying for this year’s $14 billion American pledge, he denied that
\nSouth Korea was receiving any subsidy from the World Bank, because the interest
\nrate charged on the Koreans’ loan was a shade above the bank’s borrowing rate.
\nBut all World Bank loans are effectively subsidized by being underwritten by the
\nUnited States and other Western governments, and Korea has received loans at
\nbelow-market interest rates from the bank.<\/p>\n

Mr. Conable also misrepresented the nature of the World Bank’s efforts in
\nEthiopia. The Ethiopian Government is brutalizing its own people and doing its
\nThe New York Times, July 30, 1989<\/p>\n

best to make Idi Amin look like a moderate. The Government has begun a program
\nto forcibly move three-quarters of the country’s poulation into
\nGovernment-controlled villages, and last February peasants who resisted the
\nGovernment’s notorious resettlement program were massacred by the Ethiopian
\narmy. Even so, the World Bank has continued providing a huge amount of aid –
\nincluding over $100 million in l988 – to the Ethiopian Government.<\/p>\n

During the l980’s, the fastest growing part of the bank’s portfolio has been
\nloans to communist governments. Mr. Conable told Congress, ”The World Bank has
\nbeen instrumental in encouraging communist governments to decentralize and
\nliberalize their economies and introduce economic market incentives.” But in
\nNovember l986, an internal review by the World Bank’s North African, Middle
\nEastern, and European section examined World Bank loans to Hungary, Romania and
\nYugoslavia and concluded: ”The major problem has been the unwillingness of
\nthese countries to allow bank involvement in policy issues. Projects have been
\nprepared to meet Five-Year Plan objectives which could not be questioned or
\nanalyzed by the bank.” World Bank money has therefore gone to finance the usual
\npriorities of the communist governments.<\/p>\n

The World Bank is priding itself on its structural adjustment program that
\nallegedly exists to finance market-oriented reforms by recipients. But an August
\nl988 confidential World Bank analysis of the effects of structural adjustment
\nThe New York Times, July 30, 1989<\/p>\n

lending showed that African countries that received adjustment loans are now
\ndoing significantly worse economically than African countries that had not
\nreceived such loans. Worldwide, among governments that received structural
\nadjustment loans, comparing the period before and after receiving the loans, the
\nWorld Bank study found that average external debt-export ratios increased from
\n272 percent to 392 percent, inflation increased in the majority of countries,
\nand the average ratio of government expenditures to gross domestic product
\nincreased sharply, from 27.0 percent to 30.5 percent. The rise in government
\nspending was predictable, since structural adjustment loans have been used to
\nincrease tax collection, raise civil service salaries and bail out floundering
\nstate-owned companies. These efforts epitomize the World Bank’s concept of
\n”free market.”<\/p>\n

Mr. CONABLE declared in l987, ”Our common goal should be to restore the
\nmajor debtor countries to full creditworthiness within five to seven years.” At
\ntimes, he talks as if creditworthiness were a mysterious vapor that the bank can
\ncreate simply by dispersing more billions to needy governments. Many Latin
\nAmerican countries are not creditworthy largely because they are not
\ntrustworthy. Much of their problem is that their own citizens, if they can save
\na few dollars, send it out of the country as soon as possible before a
\npolitician steals it.
\nThe New York Times, July 30, 1989<\/p>\n

The World Bank’s ”have money, must lend” syndrome will continue to be a
\ncurse to the world’s oppressed citizens and a threat to financial stability. Mr.
\nConable should retire as soon as possible.<\/p>\n

******<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

This is the 30th anniversary of my first attack on the World Bank in the national media. Reposted below are some of my attacks on the Bank from the Wall Street Journal and New York Times.\u00a0 I discuss in Public Policy Hooligan how I nabbed some of the confidential documents exposed below. The Bank continues […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":8773,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[471,415,169,485,327,7,211,209,45,164,27,123,125,455,160,252,279,151,99],"class_list":["post-8770","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","tag-atrocities-2","tag-boondoggle","tag-cartoon-2","tag-corruption-2","tag-cynicism","tag-dictatorship","tag-foreign-aid-2","tag-fraud-2","tag-freedom","tag-leviathan","tag-lying","tag-public-policy-hooligan","tag-public-policy-hooligan-2","tag-socialism-2","tag-socialism","tag-tyranny","tag-tyranny-2","tag-waste","tag-world-bank"],"yoast_head":"\nWorld Bank Ravages the Third World - 30th Anniv. - James Bovard<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"Celebrating the 30th anniv. of my first attack on World Bank - which continues propping up tyrants & bankrolling socialist policies around the globe.\" \/>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/jimbovard.com\/blog\/2015\/09\/30\/world-bank-ravages-the-third-world-30th-anniv\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"World Bank Ravages the Third World - 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