NEWS: The World Bank forwards a 70 point agenda to Bangladesh
The World Bank has forwarded 70-point agenda to the government on financial, social, judiciary, election, corruption and governance for implementation in the current 2007-2008 fiscal year.
The future lending from World Bank and International Monetary Fund is linked with the implementation of the key issues of the agenda, officials from the Ministry of Finance said. They also said that many of the points in the agenda had already been incorporated in the budget for 2007-08 fiscal years, while the government is working on a number of other issues.
Some of the issues included in the agenda are related to revenue and monetary matters, seeking measures to maintain macroeconomic stability, and further tightening of monetary policy to combat inflation. The global lender wants commitments to eliminate average nominal protection rates, separate tax policy and planning from tax administration, and combine the two large taxpayers units (tax and value added tax).
Bringing the Agrani Bank to the point of sale, revamping the boards of Agrani, Janata and Sonali banks, amending guidelines for provident
fund and insurance fund to energise treasury bond market and reforming the insurance law are among the World Bank's agenda for financial sector. Its agenda for power and energy sectors include financial restructuring plan for power companies and enabling private investment in power generation and operationalising Bangladesh Energy Regulatory Commission.
Luckily the World Bank is not planning to have a consultation to assess progress on the use of a non-intrusive and streamlined new conditionality in Bangladesh – they would have a hard time to come up with the right evidence to support the expected trends!
The full text of the news report, written by Nazmul Ahsan and Obaidul Ghani, can be found in the daily NewAge, July 21, 2007. Dhaka, Bangladesh: www.newagebd.com
Friday, August 31, 2007
EVENTS: Public hearing on the World Bank in The Hague
EVENTS: Public hearing on the World Bank in The Hague
The World Bank Campaign Europe is preparing a public hearing on the World Bank in co-operation with the Permanent Peoples’ Tribunal. It will take place on the 15th of October in The Hague, the Netherlands, one week before the Annual Meetings of the World Bank and the IMF.
The World Bank is being criticised more strongly than ever by donor and borrower governments as well as civil society organisations and local communities for increasing rather than reducing poverty by imposing harmful economic policy conditions; for environmental devastation; for contributing to conflict; and for failing to respect local peoples’ rights.
2007 is the year where donor governments negotiate the 15th replenishment of funds to the concessional arm of the World Bank, the International Development Association (IDA). The conclusions of the Hearing will put donor governments under pressure to set more precise objectives for how taxpayers’ aid money should be spent, and to audit performance on a regular basis. The documentation of the Hearing will also provide a solid source to feed an intensive debate about the future of the organisation, the current development model and potential alternatives.
Witnesses from all Southern continents will give testimony of the impacts of World Bank policies and practices, especially in the areas of conditionality and fossil fuel project funding. Well-known and respected experts will listen to testimonies from all parts of the world about the impact of World Bank financing and ask questions. In the evening, the expert panel will convene to draft a declaration to be presented in a press conference the next morning.
There will be a live video streamlining for the entire event on www.worldbankcampaigneurope.org. Already now you can cast a vote to tell your development minister to act now and to seriously question and change World Bank policies. Change cannot wait!
For more information please get in touch with Juliane Westphal jwestphal@eurodad.org.
The World Bank Campaign Europe is preparing a public hearing on the World Bank in co-operation with the Permanent Peoples’ Tribunal. It will take place on the 15th of October in The Hague, the Netherlands, one week before the Annual Meetings of the World Bank and the IMF.
The World Bank is being criticised more strongly than ever by donor and borrower governments as well as civil society organisations and local communities for increasing rather than reducing poverty by imposing harmful economic policy conditions; for environmental devastation; for contributing to conflict; and for failing to respect local peoples’ rights.
2007 is the year where donor governments negotiate the 15th replenishment of funds to the concessional arm of the World Bank, the International Development Association (IDA). The conclusions of the Hearing will put donor governments under pressure to set more precise objectives for how taxpayers’ aid money should be spent, and to audit performance on a regular basis. The documentation of the Hearing will also provide a solid source to feed an intensive debate about the future of the organisation, the current development model and potential alternatives.
Witnesses from all Southern continents will give testimony of the impacts of World Bank policies and practices, especially in the areas of conditionality and fossil fuel project funding. Well-known and respected experts will listen to testimonies from all parts of the world about the impact of World Bank financing and ask questions. In the evening, the expert panel will convene to draft a declaration to be presented in a press conference the next morning.
There will be a live video streamlining for the entire event on www.worldbankcampaigneurope.org. Already now you can cast a vote to tell your development minister to act now and to seriously question and change World Bank policies. Change cannot wait!
For more information please get in touch with Juliane Westphal jwestphal@eurodad.org.
"World Economic Growth Will Slow Down In 2007" - Francois Bourguignon
The following report by reuters clearly states a crisis in 2007
http://www.reuters.com/article/reutersEdge/idUSL306111520070830?pageNumber=2
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
DAKAR (Reuters) - The World Bank's chief economist on Thursday forecast that world economic growth would slow in 2007 but said the possibility of a crisis would diminish if the global economy could weather the next few weeks.
Francois Bourguignon, senior vice president at the multilateral lender, said the deceleration in world economic growth this year should not have a deep impact on developing nations, where the bank focuses its development lending.
"We expect some slowdown in world economic growth this year," he said, adding that this would likely trim between 0.3 and 0.4 percentage points from growth in developing nations.
"Last year, developing economies grew by 6.5 percent, so this year we are looking at just over 6 percent," he told Reuters during a visit to West Africa to discuss the World Bank's ongoing strategic policy review.
"Growth is still likely to be strong next year," he said.
Asked about the recent turmoil in financial markets, stirred by fallout from high-risk U.S. subprime mortgage lending, Bourguignon played down the likelihood of a severe impact on the world economy.
"If there must be a crisis, it will be in 2007. If we can get through the next couple of weeks, then that risk will fall," he said. "If there is a crisis, it is more likely to be a temporary crisis."
Bourguignon said the scandal surrounding the departure of Paul Wolfowitz from the World Bank's presidency had done no permanent damage to the institution. He said new chief Robert Zoellick was conducting business as usual.
Wolfowitz left under a cloud in June in a scandal involving a promotion for his companion, Shaha Riza, who also worked at the bank The vice president said that Africa, which he characterized as the lender's priority region, may be under-represented in terms of its shares in the bank.
"Africa has a weight which is inferior to its demographic weight, and probably even its economic weight," he said.
http://www.reuters.com/article/reutersEdge/idUSL306111520070830?pageNumber=2
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
DAKAR (Reuters) - The World Bank's chief economist on Thursday forecast that world economic growth would slow in 2007 but said the possibility of a crisis would diminish if the global economy could weather the next few weeks.
Francois Bourguignon, senior vice president at the multilateral lender, said the deceleration in world economic growth this year should not have a deep impact on developing nations, where the bank focuses its development lending.
"We expect some slowdown in world economic growth this year," he said, adding that this would likely trim between 0.3 and 0.4 percentage points from growth in developing nations.
"Last year, developing economies grew by 6.5 percent, so this year we are looking at just over 6 percent," he told Reuters during a visit to West Africa to discuss the World Bank's ongoing strategic policy review.
"Growth is still likely to be strong next year," he said.
Asked about the recent turmoil in financial markets, stirred by fallout from high-risk U.S. subprime mortgage lending, Bourguignon played down the likelihood of a severe impact on the world economy.
"If there must be a crisis, it will be in 2007. If we can get through the next couple of weeks, then that risk will fall," he said. "If there is a crisis, it is more likely to be a temporary crisis."
Bourguignon said the scandal surrounding the departure of Paul Wolfowitz from the World Bank's presidency had done no permanent damage to the institution. He said new chief Robert Zoellick was conducting business as usual.
Wolfowitz left under a cloud in June in a scandal involving a promotion for his companion, Shaha Riza, who also worked at the bank The vice president said that Africa, which he characterized as the lender's priority region, may be under-represented in terms of its shares in the bank.
"Africa has a weight which is inferior to its demographic weight, and probably even its economic weight," he said.
Former World Bank Vice President predicts Global Economic Crash in 24 months !
The controversial economist Joseph Stiglitz who exposed corruption in IMF back in 2001 has now come up with a deadly news of the Global Economic Crash .
Read the article below:
http://www.prisonplanet.com/articles/october2006/301006globalcrash.htm
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Nobel Prize winner Stiglitz highlights agenda of predatory globalism now arriving in America under auspices of NAFTA Superhighway, North American Union
Paul Joseph Watson & Alex Jones/Prison Planet.com October 30 2006
Former World Bank Vice President, Chief Economist and Nobel Prize winner Joseph Stiglitz has predicted a global economic crash within 24 months - unless the current downturn is successfully managed. Asked if the situation was being properly handled Stiglitz emphatically responded "no," and also drew ominous parallels to the development of the NAFTA Superhighway and the North American Union.
Stiglitz caused controversy in October 2001 when he exposed rampant corruption within the IMF and blew the whistle on their nefarious methods of inducing countries to fall under their debt before stripping them of sovereignty and hollowing out their economies.
Speaking on the nationally syndicated Alex Jones radio show, Stiglitz defined the process of globalization as a system that was "rigged against the poor countries, rigged for the advanced industrial countries - the result of that is there were an awful lot of losers."
The Columbia University Professor described how rampant privatization has crippled Mexico, in particular citing the sell-off of major infrastructure such as roads.
"They sold the roads to the private enterprise and the hope was that they would be more efficient but of course what happens is that they didn't maintain the roads, they couldn't generate enough revenue and they eventually had to default and give the roads back to the government."
Stiglitz agreed that the process of hijacking and looting key infrastructure on the part of the IMF and World Bank, as an offshoot of predatory globalization, had now moved from the third world to Europe, the United States and Canada.
These sentiments are especially disturbing when we consider the current fast-moving quasi-secret agenda to sell-off major American highways to foreign corporations who plan to turn them into toll roads for tracking and taxation purposes - collectively known as the NAFTA Superhighway. The program forms the framework for the advancement of the North American Union - a collective governmental, border and trading bloc that President Bush has signed the U.S. over to under the Security and Prosperity Partnership of March 2005.
As we previously reported, US citizens will be forced to adopt a de-facto national identification card and have their freedom of mobility defined by behavioral fealty to the government under proposals set to derive from NAFTA superhighway toll road systems and the implementation of the American Union.
"This is a movement that's gone on all over the world," said Stiglitz, "the movement of trying to turn over basic facilities - water, roads, to the private sector."
Read the article below:
http://www.prisonplanet.com/articles/october2006/301006globalcrash.htm
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Nobel Prize winner Stiglitz highlights agenda of predatory globalism now arriving in America under auspices of NAFTA Superhighway, North American Union
Paul Joseph Watson & Alex Jones/Prison Planet.com October 30 2006
Former World Bank Vice President, Chief Economist and Nobel Prize winner Joseph Stiglitz has predicted a global economic crash within 24 months - unless the current downturn is successfully managed. Asked if the situation was being properly handled Stiglitz emphatically responded "no," and also drew ominous parallels to the development of the NAFTA Superhighway and the North American Union.
Stiglitz caused controversy in October 2001 when he exposed rampant corruption within the IMF and blew the whistle on their nefarious methods of inducing countries to fall under their debt before stripping them of sovereignty and hollowing out their economies.
Speaking on the nationally syndicated Alex Jones radio show, Stiglitz defined the process of globalization as a system that was "rigged against the poor countries, rigged for the advanced industrial countries - the result of that is there were an awful lot of losers."
The Columbia University Professor described how rampant privatization has crippled Mexico, in particular citing the sell-off of major infrastructure such as roads.
"They sold the roads to the private enterprise and the hope was that they would be more efficient but of course what happens is that they didn't maintain the roads, they couldn't generate enough revenue and they eventually had to default and give the roads back to the government."
Stiglitz agreed that the process of hijacking and looting key infrastructure on the part of the IMF and World Bank, as an offshoot of predatory globalization, had now moved from the third world to Europe, the United States and Canada.
These sentiments are especially disturbing when we consider the current fast-moving quasi-secret agenda to sell-off major American highways to foreign corporations who plan to turn them into toll roads for tracking and taxation purposes - collectively known as the NAFTA Superhighway. The program forms the framework for the advancement of the North American Union - a collective governmental, border and trading bloc that President Bush has signed the U.S. over to under the Security and Prosperity Partnership of March 2005.
As we previously reported, US citizens will be forced to adopt a de-facto national identification card and have their freedom of mobility defined by behavioral fealty to the government under proposals set to derive from NAFTA superhighway toll road systems and the implementation of the American Union.
"This is a movement that's gone on all over the world," said Stiglitz, "the movement of trying to turn over basic facilities - water, roads, to the private sector."
Is the World Bank Group responsible for starvation deaths in Africa?
Are the WTO, World Bank, and IMF to blame for huge amounts of the world's misery? Is transnational capital flow or multinational corporations an inherently bad idea?
Read the following article !
What Is The Right Way To Complain About Globalization?
http://equivocality.net/what-is-the-right-way-to-complain-about-globalization/
--------------------------------------------------------
By far the greatest influence of the external environment on the development of the East African countries derives from their participation in the world economy. And the overall effect of this influence is negative. It arises from the tendency within the global economy towards the globalization of capital and its sources of profits, the transnationalization of the capitalist productive forces and production ethos, and the compradorization of ruling circles. This tendency has led to the obliteration of national economic boundaries by the activities of the multinational corporations, the globalization of production and consumption habits, the subjection of national economic politics to the dictates of foreign firms and such international capitalist institutions as the world bank and the IMF.
This passage is from a paper entitled “The External Environment of Development in East Africa”, from the book The Crisis of Development Strategies in East Africa. It reads like a totally modern critique of global capitalism and its effects on the developing world. You might hear something very like this at a WTO protest anywhere in the world. However, it was written in 1986.
The rest of the article is pretty representative of standard Marxist ideology. It uses phrase like “bourgeoisie”, “social liberation struggles”, and “crisis of the capitalist system.” I find all of this rather silly — not because capitalism does not deserve to be criticized, but because standard Marxist communist thought is economically naive, overly ideological, and, let’s face it, somewhat rabid.
This suggests to me that the standard modern sound-bite critique of globalization, which came to public visibility during the late 1990s in such large-scale movements as the Seattle protest during the WTO summit of 1999, actually originated much earlier, at least a decade, in communist ideology and protest culture.
Interesting.
Why am I bringing this up?
Clearly, something is wrong with the world economic system. Too many people are very poor, even in rich countries. The world produces enough food for all, but Sub-Saharan Africa is still starving. Americans are wearing $150 pairs of Nikes which Filipino children are manufacturing twelve hours per day for slave wages. It is easy, and important, to get angry.
But what to yell?
The protest slogans have to come from somewhere. The intellectual framework for the criticism has to come from somewhere. Most importantly, the world-view has to come from somewhere because all those students, in poor and rich countries alike, cannot actually afford to visit the sweatshops personally. Most of them also don’t care to study standard economics, because a) it’s difficult and technical and b) it’s the subject of the enemy, the barbarous tools of the capitalist pigs. I’ve actually had the director of a community currency system tell me to my face that he didn’t want to study any economics because “it’s just the old ways of thought, the system that’s keeping people down.”
What seems to have happened is the tireless first-world communist minority — who have been printing leaflets for God knows how many decades in the face of crushing indifference — found themselves in the early 1990s in possession of the only ready-made, cogent critique of globalization around. The over-branded population of the rich-countries started to wake up around that time, started to take offense at the growing invasion of corporate power into cognitive and moral spaces, but in the absence of a bigger picture all that they could muster was unease. It took a simple, quotable ideology to turn discontent into protest
Now, this is not a critique of Marxist ideology. Frankly, I think it pretty much critiques itself these days, and I encourage anyone who’s interested to read The Communist Manifesto. Marx was certainly on to something when he noted that unequal distribution of wealth was a problem, as it still is. He simply didn’t solve the problem in any meaningful sense. Instead, we got an ideology; we got the attractive, seductive, and awkward model of dialectical materialism and class war. To top it all off, his work was all grounded in very naive economics, because he wrote 150 years ago, before the development of the foundations of what is now elementary micro-economics. As a result he makes some ridiculous predictions, such as the “crisis of capitalism” due to excess surplus, which has never come to pass.
So I’m not at all bothered with communism or communists or Marxists per se, and in most cases I applaud their goals. However, I can’t stand ideology, because it gets in the way of learning. And, unfortunately, ideology seems to be mostly what those critiquing globalization at the street level mostly have to offer at the moment.
This is very, very sad, because the problems of globalization are very real, and deserve an intelligent critique.
For the record, I believe that the basic theory of comparative advantage in standard economics is correct: everyone is better off when each country produces what it can produce most cheaply. I think that the insane increases in first-world material standard of living in the last 200 years (consider, for example, how many hours you have to work to obtain a blanket now at Walmart versus 100 years ago when you had to raise the sheep first) are due mostly to specialization and technological advances, rather than the ever-more efficient exploitation of the world’s poor. In other words, I think free trade is, in principle, a good thing. Yet I am deeply uneasy about branding, and the commodification of the commons, such as the replacement of public spaces with malls. I think it is obvious that certain Powerful Interests are ignoring the trade externalities that are destroying our environment. And, as my friend Leslie Lausch asks, “why is it illegal to to violate human rights during the manufacture of a shoe in the United States, but legal to buy that same shoe if these rights are violated in another country?”
Is capitalism inherently flawed, violent and unfair? Are the WTO, World Bank, and IMF to blame for huge amounts of the world’s misery? Is transnational capital flow or multinational corporations an inherently bad idea? I don’t know. Read that again. I don’t know. This is what I am saying that the author of the above quoted paragraph is not. The world is big and very, very complex. I’m seeing as much as I can personally; for the rest I must rely on second-hand accounts. Here are some books on the subject which I have read or am meaning to read, in an effort to understand these complexities
Have read:
Culture and Prosperity: The Truth About Markets - Why Some Nations Are Rich but Most Remain Poor by John Kay, 2004. The best one-volume introduction to both the theory and practice of global economics that I have ever found, by a former head of the Bank of England.
First year textbook on economics. I read Lipsey, but I imagine just about anything will do. If you have first-year calculus, you can and should understand this material, because this is the best of human knowledge on how resources can/should be/are distributed in human societies; analogy is no substitute for the real deal, in the end.
No Logo by Naomi Klein, 1996. The classic, popular critique of branding and, indirectly, globalization. She makes some technical mistakes as she is not an economist (such as comparing GDP, which is essentialy the “profit” of a country, to the gross income of a corporation when looking at the relative sizes of each) so you need to be suspicious of her statistics, but she really nails down all the important but “soft” reasons why globalization is worrysome.
Open World: The Truth about Globalization, by Philippe Legrain, 2004. A slightly hysterical response to No Logo etc. by a mainstream economist, however his extensive factual knowledge is very valuable, and in the end his argument is that we can design globalization to serve whatever ends we wish.
Alternatives To Economic Globalization by John Cavanagh, Jerry Mander, Sarah Anderson, and Debi Barker, 2002. A collection of essays on the title topic. Quality varies; to me there were obvious problems with many of the schemes proposed.
The Elusive Quest for Growth: Economists’ Adventures and Misadventures in the Tropics, William Easterly, 2002. Basically, one chapter on each major economic development strategy that has been tried over the past 50 years (loans, grants, debt relief, population control, education, infrastructure building, etc.) None of them has really worked, and this book attempts to discern why. Valuable.
Banker to the Poor: Micro-lending and the Battle Agaist World Poverty, by Muhammad Yunus, 2002. This is the man who won the Nobel prize for his work in micro-credit. It’s certainly a worldview — he feels that micro-credit might be able to solve pretty much everything — but the work is very solid, he’s actually helped real poor people in large numbers, and his ideas deserve serious attention.
Dark Star Safari: Overland from Cairo to Capetown by Paul Thoreaux, 2004. I don’t need to write a book about my African experience because Thoreaux has done it better than I ever could. We in west speak of “Africa” like we know what we’re saying, but we don’t. If you can’t actually visit, then you need to read this before you start talking about how to help the poor starving Africans. Hint: Africa’s problems are not entirely the West’s fault.
Want to read:
Globalization and Its Discontents, Joseph Stiglitz, 2003. The classic critique by the Nobel-prize winner and former head of the World Bank.
Making Globalization Work, also by Stiglitz, 2007. Interesting title, isn’t it?
The End of Poverty: Economic Possibilities for Our Time by Jeffery Sachs, 2006. Ambitious as hell, but the man has been doing development economics for long time, plus he actually travels to meet the people he’s allegedly trying to help, so I have to take him seriously.
Confessions of an Economic Hit Man by John Perkins, 2005. A former insider for the IMF talks about all the horrible things he’s done. Radicals and conspiracy theorists alike spoke of these sorts of economic evil deeds for decades. At last, we can confirm or deny the rumors.
Read the following article !
What Is The Right Way To Complain About Globalization?
http://equivocality.net/what-is-the-right-way-to-complain-about-globalization/
--------------------------------------------------------
By far the greatest influence of the external environment on the development of the East African countries derives from their participation in the world economy. And the overall effect of this influence is negative. It arises from the tendency within the global economy towards the globalization of capital and its sources of profits, the transnationalization of the capitalist productive forces and production ethos, and the compradorization of ruling circles. This tendency has led to the obliteration of national economic boundaries by the activities of the multinational corporations, the globalization of production and consumption habits, the subjection of national economic politics to the dictates of foreign firms and such international capitalist institutions as the world bank and the IMF.
This passage is from a paper entitled “The External Environment of Development in East Africa”, from the book The Crisis of Development Strategies in East Africa. It reads like a totally modern critique of global capitalism and its effects on the developing world. You might hear something very like this at a WTO protest anywhere in the world. However, it was written in 1986.
The rest of the article is pretty representative of standard Marxist ideology. It uses phrase like “bourgeoisie”, “social liberation struggles”, and “crisis of the capitalist system.” I find all of this rather silly — not because capitalism does not deserve to be criticized, but because standard Marxist communist thought is economically naive, overly ideological, and, let’s face it, somewhat rabid.
This suggests to me that the standard modern sound-bite critique of globalization, which came to public visibility during the late 1990s in such large-scale movements as the Seattle protest during the WTO summit of 1999, actually originated much earlier, at least a decade, in communist ideology and protest culture.
Interesting.
Why am I bringing this up?
Clearly, something is wrong with the world economic system. Too many people are very poor, even in rich countries. The world produces enough food for all, but Sub-Saharan Africa is still starving. Americans are wearing $150 pairs of Nikes which Filipino children are manufacturing twelve hours per day for slave wages. It is easy, and important, to get angry.
But what to yell?
The protest slogans have to come from somewhere. The intellectual framework for the criticism has to come from somewhere. Most importantly, the world-view has to come from somewhere because all those students, in poor and rich countries alike, cannot actually afford to visit the sweatshops personally. Most of them also don’t care to study standard economics, because a) it’s difficult and technical and b) it’s the subject of the enemy, the barbarous tools of the capitalist pigs. I’ve actually had the director of a community currency system tell me to my face that he didn’t want to study any economics because “it’s just the old ways of thought, the system that’s keeping people down.”
What seems to have happened is the tireless first-world communist minority — who have been printing leaflets for God knows how many decades in the face of crushing indifference — found themselves in the early 1990s in possession of the only ready-made, cogent critique of globalization around. The over-branded population of the rich-countries started to wake up around that time, started to take offense at the growing invasion of corporate power into cognitive and moral spaces, but in the absence of a bigger picture all that they could muster was unease. It took a simple, quotable ideology to turn discontent into protest
Now, this is not a critique of Marxist ideology. Frankly, I think it pretty much critiques itself these days, and I encourage anyone who’s interested to read The Communist Manifesto. Marx was certainly on to something when he noted that unequal distribution of wealth was a problem, as it still is. He simply didn’t solve the problem in any meaningful sense. Instead, we got an ideology; we got the attractive, seductive, and awkward model of dialectical materialism and class war. To top it all off, his work was all grounded in very naive economics, because he wrote 150 years ago, before the development of the foundations of what is now elementary micro-economics. As a result he makes some ridiculous predictions, such as the “crisis of capitalism” due to excess surplus, which has never come to pass.
So I’m not at all bothered with communism or communists or Marxists per se, and in most cases I applaud their goals. However, I can’t stand ideology, because it gets in the way of learning. And, unfortunately, ideology seems to be mostly what those critiquing globalization at the street level mostly have to offer at the moment.
This is very, very sad, because the problems of globalization are very real, and deserve an intelligent critique.
For the record, I believe that the basic theory of comparative advantage in standard economics is correct: everyone is better off when each country produces what it can produce most cheaply. I think that the insane increases in first-world material standard of living in the last 200 years (consider, for example, how many hours you have to work to obtain a blanket now at Walmart versus 100 years ago when you had to raise the sheep first) are due mostly to specialization and technological advances, rather than the ever-more efficient exploitation of the world’s poor. In other words, I think free trade is, in principle, a good thing. Yet I am deeply uneasy about branding, and the commodification of the commons, such as the replacement of public spaces with malls. I think it is obvious that certain Powerful Interests are ignoring the trade externalities that are destroying our environment. And, as my friend Leslie Lausch asks, “why is it illegal to to violate human rights during the manufacture of a shoe in the United States, but legal to buy that same shoe if these rights are violated in another country?”
Is capitalism inherently flawed, violent and unfair? Are the WTO, World Bank, and IMF to blame for huge amounts of the world’s misery? Is transnational capital flow or multinational corporations an inherently bad idea? I don’t know. Read that again. I don’t know. This is what I am saying that the author of the above quoted paragraph is not. The world is big and very, very complex. I’m seeing as much as I can personally; for the rest I must rely on second-hand accounts. Here are some books on the subject which I have read or am meaning to read, in an effort to understand these complexities
Have read:
Culture and Prosperity: The Truth About Markets - Why Some Nations Are Rich but Most Remain Poor by John Kay, 2004. The best one-volume introduction to both the theory and practice of global economics that I have ever found, by a former head of the Bank of England.
First year textbook on economics. I read Lipsey, but I imagine just about anything will do. If you have first-year calculus, you can and should understand this material, because this is the best of human knowledge on how resources can/should be/are distributed in human societies; analogy is no substitute for the real deal, in the end.
No Logo by Naomi Klein, 1996. The classic, popular critique of branding and, indirectly, globalization. She makes some technical mistakes as she is not an economist (such as comparing GDP, which is essentialy the “profit” of a country, to the gross income of a corporation when looking at the relative sizes of each) so you need to be suspicious of her statistics, but she really nails down all the important but “soft” reasons why globalization is worrysome.
Open World: The Truth about Globalization, by Philippe Legrain, 2004. A slightly hysterical response to No Logo etc. by a mainstream economist, however his extensive factual knowledge is very valuable, and in the end his argument is that we can design globalization to serve whatever ends we wish.
Alternatives To Economic Globalization by John Cavanagh, Jerry Mander, Sarah Anderson, and Debi Barker, 2002. A collection of essays on the title topic. Quality varies; to me there were obvious problems with many of the schemes proposed.
The Elusive Quest for Growth: Economists’ Adventures and Misadventures in the Tropics, William Easterly, 2002. Basically, one chapter on each major economic development strategy that has been tried over the past 50 years (loans, grants, debt relief, population control, education, infrastructure building, etc.) None of them has really worked, and this book attempts to discern why. Valuable.
Banker to the Poor: Micro-lending and the Battle Agaist World Poverty, by Muhammad Yunus, 2002. This is the man who won the Nobel prize for his work in micro-credit. It’s certainly a worldview — he feels that micro-credit might be able to solve pretty much everything — but the work is very solid, he’s actually helped real poor people in large numbers, and his ideas deserve serious attention.
Dark Star Safari: Overland from Cairo to Capetown by Paul Thoreaux, 2004. I don’t need to write a book about my African experience because Thoreaux has done it better than I ever could. We in west speak of “Africa” like we know what we’re saying, but we don’t. If you can’t actually visit, then you need to read this before you start talking about how to help the poor starving Africans. Hint: Africa’s problems are not entirely the West’s fault.
Want to read:
Globalization and Its Discontents, Joseph Stiglitz, 2003. The classic critique by the Nobel-prize winner and former head of the World Bank.
Making Globalization Work, also by Stiglitz, 2007. Interesting title, isn’t it?
The End of Poverty: Economic Possibilities for Our Time by Jeffery Sachs, 2006. Ambitious as hell, but the man has been doing development economics for long time, plus he actually travels to meet the people he’s allegedly trying to help, so I have to take him seriously.
Confessions of an Economic Hit Man by John Perkins, 2005. A former insider for the IMF talks about all the horrible things he’s done. Radicals and conspiracy theorists alike spoke of these sorts of economic evil deeds for decades. At last, we can confirm or deny the rumors.
Thursday, August 30, 2007
Mainstreaming Public-Private Partnerships in Urban Infrastructure
So back to back with the JNNURM mission secretariat and their TA.
We have a new TA for $2mn and all this is to set up many PPP projects to pilot and then mainstream PPP in Urban Infra.
Approval in a couple of Months.
This PID says they have talked to many city corps But in Bangalore there is no council in place since Nov 2006.
Vinay Baindur
==============================================================
http://www.adb.org/Documents/PIDs/41006012.asp
Promoting Public-Private Partnerships in Urban Infrastructure in India : India
Timetable
Project Number 41006-01
TA Name Promoting Public-Private Partnerships in Urban Infrastructure in India
Type/Modality of Assistance [Proposed]
Technical Assistance Special Fund US$2.0 million
Thematic Classification Sustainable Economic Growth
Private Sector Development
Capacity Development
Description Background. Urban areas in India are growing, and have been the key drivers of the manufacturing- and services-led economic growth. However, inadequate urban infrastructure is becoming an important constraint on faster economic growth. The urban infrastructure investments have to be accelerated to address the existing gaps and meet the growing urban basic service demand of the burgeoning urban population. The Government of India has launched the Jawaharlal Nehru National Urban Renewal Mission (JNNURM) in 2005 with Rs 50,000 crores ($12 billion) outlay over sever year duration. Both the JNNURM reforms and financing needs are likely to encourage urban infrastructure PPPs in JNNURM cities.
The Government's efforts to encourage PPPs. The Government of India has initiated a number of steps to promote PPPs for infrastructure development. These steps include: (i) establishment of a PPP cell in the Department of Economic Affairs in the Ministry of Finance; (ii) setting up the India Infrastructure Finance Company Limited; (iii) creating a viability gap fund; (iv) forming an inter-ministerial group to determine pre-qualification of bidders under PPP; and (v) preparing PPP toolkits and model concession agreements. A number of mandatory and optional reforms of JNNURM will create enabling governance and institutional framework, leading to greater interest and investments by private sector in urban infrastructure development.
Constraints for urban infrastructure PPPs. Review of the relevant literature indicates a number of reasons for reluctance on part of private sector to assume commercial risks in majority of the urban infrastructure sub-sectors. Urban sector, by and large, has to deal with third-tier governments, which bring additional elements of legal, policy, regulatory and implementation challenges. The urban sector also has to confront with a challenging legacy of very low tariffs, poor efficiencies in urban basic service delivery, poor capacities in the urban local bodies (ULBs), and inertia to reform laws, regulations and policies to encourage and enable urban infrastructure PPPs.
The commercial and political risks of water supply and sewerage projects are high as the projects dependent on other cash flows of ULBs like property taxes. The general financial health of most ULBs is weak. Low tariffs and poor fiscal status of majority of ULBs, in turn, increase the commercial and political risks for a private investor. All put together, many of the urban infrastructure sub-sectors are perceived as a high risk sector, resulting in anemic inflows of private capital. This is, however, likely to change significantly with the deepening of the reforms supported by JNNURM.
Improving prospects for urban infrastructure PPPs through the JNNURM. The following factors resulting from JNNURM are likely to create demand for private capital as well as greater interest of private sector in the urban infrastructure development: (i) part-grant financing by the JNNURM (which is likely to increase the bankability of a number of large urban infrastructure projects) and (ii) the financing gap/needs arising from the state- and city-level contribution for the JNNURM projects. However, for the PPPs to take-off in the urban sector in a large way, a great deal of ground work needs to be done within appropriate sectoral policy environment of respective state governments, and will be largely contingent on the developing shelf of 'bankable' projects, and demonstrating feasibility of urban PPPs in sub-sectors like water supply and sewerage, and urban transport with help of demonstration projects that highlight global best practices in urban PPPs.
Objectives and Scope The proposed TA will complement the ongoing advisory TA for Mainstreaming PPP at State Level, and the TA for Mainstreaming PPP cells at the central line ministries, including MOUD. However, the TA will focus on promoting PPPs in urban infrastructure, and assist selected states and cities in addressing key bottlenecks that will lead to the eventual structuring of bankable urban projects that will attract private capital and/or private sector strategic interests. The long term impact of the TA will be that increased number of cities provide improved urban services by engaging PPP all over India; accelerate economic growth and reduce poverty; and improve urban environment and enhance the quality of life of urban inhabitants. The outcomes of the TA will be that: (i) legal, policy and regulator barriers to PPP at selected state and city-level identified and addressed; (ii) capacity of local government officials to strategize and plan for private sector involvement in urban sectors (water supply, sanitation, solid waste, and urban transport), which includes PPP structuring, transparent and competitive procurement, implementation, and enforcement of PPP contracts strengthened; and (iii) 3 to 4 well structured urban PPPs incorporating private sector efficiencies and capital are brought to financial closure, serving as replicable PPP models for other Indian cities.
Linkage to Country/Sector Strategy The Government of India and the Asian Development Bank (ADB) have given high priority for promoting public-private partnerships (PPPs) to accelerate and sustain infrastructure growth in India. ADB has provided technical assistance (TA) to the Government of India for mainstreaming PPPs at state level. In addition, ADB is also processing a TA support to establish PPP cells in all the line ministries at the central government level, including the Ministry of Urban Development (MOUD). Implementing PPPs in urban infrastructure, particularly water supply and sewerage, has been challenging and the progress has been relatively slower than in other infrastructure sub-sectors. The Government of India requested ADB for advisory TA to promote PPPs in urban infrastructure development. The ADB's Country Strategy and Program Update 2006–2008 lays emphasis on supporting PPPs in urban infrastructure development. Likewise, ADB's Innovation and Efficiency Initiative gives greater flexibility to ADB to support sub-sovereign entities to introduce and scale-up innovative PPP modalities. There is need for a separate advisory technical assistance (ADTA) for promoting PPPs in urban infrastructure in India. The proposed ADTA will complement the ongoing TA of ADB for mainstreaming PPPs at state level, however, with specific focus on promoting PPPs in urban infrastructure.
Summary of Environmental and Social Issues The TA will help address institutional and implementation issues for accelerating urban infrastructure development through PPP modalities. It is likely to lead more private sector investments in water supply, sewerage, solid waste management and urban mass transport. And more important, the TA is likely to bring greater private sector efficiencies into these sub-sectors. Both greater investments and efficiencies are likely to have positive impact on basic urban services with direct positive impact on the quality of life of urban poor, and urban environment. Thus, the TA is likely to have positive impact on urban social and environmental issues.
Consultations Planned or Carried Out Extensive consultations have been held by the Mission with governments, city corporations, private sector and financial institutions. The Mission held meetings with the Department of Economic Affairs, Government of India; Ministry of Urban Development, Government of India; Departments of Urban Development in various states including Gujarat, Maharashtra, Andhra Pradesh, Tamil Nadu and Karnataka; meetings with city corporations in Ahmedabad, Pune, Mumbai, Nagpur, Hyderabad, Vijayawada, Chennai and Bangalore. The mission also met a number of important urban infrastructure financial intermediaries, consulting firms active in urban infrastructure, and private firms interested in water supply, solid waste and sanitation.
Responsible ADB Officer Mr. Sekhar Bonu
Responsible ADB Department South Asia Department
Responsible ADB Division Urban Development Division, SARD
Executing Agencies Department of Economic Affairs
Ministry of Finance
Top
Timetable
Fact Finding 10 Apr 2007 to 20 Apr 2007
Approval 26 Oct 2007
We have a new TA for $2mn and all this is to set up many PPP projects to pilot and then mainstream PPP in Urban Infra.
Approval in a couple of Months.
This PID says they have talked to many city corps But in Bangalore there is no council in place since Nov 2006.
Vinay Baindur
==============================================================
http://www.adb.org/Documents/PIDs/41006012.asp
Promoting Public-Private Partnerships in Urban Infrastructure in India : India
Timetable
Project Number 41006-01
TA Name Promoting Public-Private Partnerships in Urban Infrastructure in India
Type/Modality of Assistance [Proposed]
Technical Assistance Special Fund US$2.0 million
Thematic Classification Sustainable Economic Growth
Private Sector Development
Capacity Development
Description Background. Urban areas in India are growing, and have been the key drivers of the manufacturing- and services-led economic growth. However, inadequate urban infrastructure is becoming an important constraint on faster economic growth. The urban infrastructure investments have to be accelerated to address the existing gaps and meet the growing urban basic service demand of the burgeoning urban population. The Government of India has launched the Jawaharlal Nehru National Urban Renewal Mission (JNNURM) in 2005 with Rs 50,000 crores ($12 billion) outlay over sever year duration. Both the JNNURM reforms and financing needs are likely to encourage urban infrastructure PPPs in JNNURM cities.
The Government's efforts to encourage PPPs. The Government of India has initiated a number of steps to promote PPPs for infrastructure development. These steps include: (i) establishment of a PPP cell in the Department of Economic Affairs in the Ministry of Finance; (ii) setting up the India Infrastructure Finance Company Limited; (iii) creating a viability gap fund; (iv) forming an inter-ministerial group to determine pre-qualification of bidders under PPP; and (v) preparing PPP toolkits and model concession agreements. A number of mandatory and optional reforms of JNNURM will create enabling governance and institutional framework, leading to greater interest and investments by private sector in urban infrastructure development.
Constraints for urban infrastructure PPPs. Review of the relevant literature indicates a number of reasons for reluctance on part of private sector to assume commercial risks in majority of the urban infrastructure sub-sectors. Urban sector, by and large, has to deal with third-tier governments, which bring additional elements of legal, policy, regulatory and implementation challenges. The urban sector also has to confront with a challenging legacy of very low tariffs, poor efficiencies in urban basic service delivery, poor capacities in the urban local bodies (ULBs), and inertia to reform laws, regulations and policies to encourage and enable urban infrastructure PPPs.
The commercial and political risks of water supply and sewerage projects are high as the projects dependent on other cash flows of ULBs like property taxes. The general financial health of most ULBs is weak. Low tariffs and poor fiscal status of majority of ULBs, in turn, increase the commercial and political risks for a private investor. All put together, many of the urban infrastructure sub-sectors are perceived as a high risk sector, resulting in anemic inflows of private capital. This is, however, likely to change significantly with the deepening of the reforms supported by JNNURM.
Improving prospects for urban infrastructure PPPs through the JNNURM. The following factors resulting from JNNURM are likely to create demand for private capital as well as greater interest of private sector in the urban infrastructure development: (i) part-grant financing by the JNNURM (which is likely to increase the bankability of a number of large urban infrastructure projects) and (ii) the financing gap/needs arising from the state- and city-level contribution for the JNNURM projects. However, for the PPPs to take-off in the urban sector in a large way, a great deal of ground work needs to be done within appropriate sectoral policy environment of respective state governments, and will be largely contingent on the developing shelf of 'bankable' projects, and demonstrating feasibility of urban PPPs in sub-sectors like water supply and sewerage, and urban transport with help of demonstration projects that highlight global best practices in urban PPPs.
Objectives and Scope The proposed TA will complement the ongoing advisory TA for Mainstreaming PPP at State Level, and the TA for Mainstreaming PPP cells at the central line ministries, including MOUD. However, the TA will focus on promoting PPPs in urban infrastructure, and assist selected states and cities in addressing key bottlenecks that will lead to the eventual structuring of bankable urban projects that will attract private capital and/or private sector strategic interests. The long term impact of the TA will be that increased number of cities provide improved urban services by engaging PPP all over India; accelerate economic growth and reduce poverty; and improve urban environment and enhance the quality of life of urban inhabitants. The outcomes of the TA will be that: (i) legal, policy and regulator barriers to PPP at selected state and city-level identified and addressed; (ii) capacity of local government officials to strategize and plan for private sector involvement in urban sectors (water supply, sanitation, solid waste, and urban transport), which includes PPP structuring, transparent and competitive procurement, implementation, and enforcement of PPP contracts strengthened; and (iii) 3 to 4 well structured urban PPPs incorporating private sector efficiencies and capital are brought to financial closure, serving as replicable PPP models for other Indian cities.
Linkage to Country/Sector Strategy The Government of India and the Asian Development Bank (ADB) have given high priority for promoting public-private partnerships (PPPs) to accelerate and sustain infrastructure growth in India. ADB has provided technical assistance (TA) to the Government of India for mainstreaming PPPs at state level. In addition, ADB is also processing a TA support to establish PPP cells in all the line ministries at the central government level, including the Ministry of Urban Development (MOUD). Implementing PPPs in urban infrastructure, particularly water supply and sewerage, has been challenging and the progress has been relatively slower than in other infrastructure sub-sectors. The Government of India requested ADB for advisory TA to promote PPPs in urban infrastructure development. The ADB's Country Strategy and Program Update 2006–2008 lays emphasis on supporting PPPs in urban infrastructure development. Likewise, ADB's Innovation and Efficiency Initiative gives greater flexibility to ADB to support sub-sovereign entities to introduce and scale-up innovative PPP modalities. There is need for a separate advisory technical assistance (ADTA) for promoting PPPs in urban infrastructure in India. The proposed ADTA will complement the ongoing TA of ADB for mainstreaming PPPs at state level, however, with specific focus on promoting PPPs in urban infrastructure.
Summary of Environmental and Social Issues The TA will help address institutional and implementation issues for accelerating urban infrastructure development through PPP modalities. It is likely to lead more private sector investments in water supply, sewerage, solid waste management and urban mass transport. And more important, the TA is likely to bring greater private sector efficiencies into these sub-sectors. Both greater investments and efficiencies are likely to have positive impact on basic urban services with direct positive impact on the quality of life of urban poor, and urban environment. Thus, the TA is likely to have positive impact on urban social and environmental issues.
Consultations Planned or Carried Out Extensive consultations have been held by the Mission with governments, city corporations, private sector and financial institutions. The Mission held meetings with the Department of Economic Affairs, Government of India; Ministry of Urban Development, Government of India; Departments of Urban Development in various states including Gujarat, Maharashtra, Andhra Pradesh, Tamil Nadu and Karnataka; meetings with city corporations in Ahmedabad, Pune, Mumbai, Nagpur, Hyderabad, Vijayawada, Chennai and Bangalore. The mission also met a number of important urban infrastructure financial intermediaries, consulting firms active in urban infrastructure, and private firms interested in water supply, solid waste and sanitation.
Responsible ADB Officer Mr. Sekhar Bonu
Responsible ADB Department South Asia Department
Responsible ADB Division Urban Development Division, SARD
Executing Agencies Department of Economic Affairs
Ministry of Finance
Top
Timetable
Fact Finding 10 Apr 2007 to 20 Apr 2007
Approval 26 Oct 2007
World Bank Issues Implementation Plan for Anticorruption Strategy
freedominfo.org - IFTI Watch Update, August 28, 2007
http://www.freedominfo.org
Washington, DC, August 28, 2007 - The World Bank has released its long-awaited "implementation plan" for its governance and anticorruption strategy, but the document is much shorter and less specific that the guiding Bank "strategy" set in March, according to a new article posted today on freedominfo.org's IFTI Watch column.
While the plan includes some new revelations, it does not specifically mention media development or support for freedom of information, nor does it propose any changes to the Bank's own disclosure policy, something Bank officials previously have said would occur.
Please follow the link below to read the full article:
http://www.freedominfo.org
http://www.freedominfo.org
Washington, DC, August 28, 2007 - The World Bank has released its long-awaited "implementation plan" for its governance and anticorruption strategy, but the document is much shorter and less specific that the guiding Bank "strategy" set in March, according to a new article posted today on freedominfo.org's IFTI Watch column.
While the plan includes some new revelations, it does not specifically mention media development or support for freedom of information, nor does it propose any changes to the Bank's own disclosure policy, something Bank officials previously have said would occur.
Please follow the link below to read the full article:
http://www.freedominfo.org
Wednesday, August 29, 2007
Indian poor pay the price of power and water sector reform
The following three articles show a clear pattern of the costs of privatization which are borne by the poor of our country. - Vinay Baindur
------------------
"Power privatisation model a total failure"
Staff Reporter
Independent audit and CBI probe demanded
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Delhi BJP president lays the blame on the Chief Minister
Entire privatisation process should be reviewed: Bardhan
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
NEW DELHI: Cutting across party lines, political leaders at a meeting here on Thursday strongly criticised the privatisation of the power distribution network in the Capital five years ago and proclaimed that the model had proved a failure.
At the meeting attended by residents' welfare associations, activists, power engineers, trade union members, legal experts and technocrats, the participants described the Delhi privatisation model as a "total failure".
"The all-party meeting was an attempt to evaluate the views of all stakeholders of Delhi and see if we agree on the results of the five years of privatisation. Nobody expressed any satisfaction at all," said Sanjay Kaul of People's Action who conducted the meeting.
"Three proposals were put to the floor and all of these were passed unanimously," he said.
Delhi BJP president Harsh Vardhan spoke disparagingly about almost every aspect of the deal, be it service, billing, fast running meters or power cuts. He pinned the blame on the Chief Minister and accused her of ignoring the consumers' interests.
Communist Party of India general secretary A. B. Bardhan praised the RWAs for having taken the fight to the streets and said a similar agitation must be undertaken to have the entire privatisation process reviewed beginning with the Electricity Act, 2003, which he described as fundamentally flawed.
Congress MLA S.C. Vats said his work as Public Accounts Committee Chairman was to give answers to the citizens about the truth behind the privatisation deal. He said the Electricity Act, 2003, must be reviewed.
The meeting ended with an agreement to put pressure on the Delhi Electricity Regulatory Commission to review the performance of the past five years through an independent audit and force the Government though agitation to order a CBI probe into the entire deal.
© Copyright 2000 - 2006 The Hindu
Date:10/08/2007 URL: http://www.thehindu.com/2007/08/10/stories/2007081059830300.htm
----------------------------------
RWAs complain against inflated power bills Sujay Mehdudia
Delhi Cabinet sentiment reflects the common man's plight
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
The RWAs are also exploring the option of taking the matter to court `The power companies have unleashed a trail of terror in a systematic manner'
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
NEW DELHI: The "strong sentiment'' expressed by the Delhi Cabinet this past week on the "deteriorating power scenario'' in the Capital is reflective of the sentiments of lakhs of consumers who have been undergoing harassment and mental trauma at the hands of indifferent private power companies and an equally indifferent Delhi Electricity Regulatory Commission.
The residents' welfare associations across the city are hardly impressed with the "concern'' shown by the Delhi Cabinet or Chief Minister Sheila Dikshit and have termed the decision to summon the heads of Reliance Energy and Tata Power as a ploy to mislead the people of Delhi.
"Why was Mr. Anil Ambani not summoned in June and July when power cuts had peaked? It is nothing but a façade to hide the misdeeds of the power companies who have been vested with unprecedented powers to harass the common man,'' remarked People's Action president Sanjay Kaul, leading a federation of RWAs in protest against the indifferent attitude of the private power companies.
The United Residents Joint Action (URJA), another platform of RWAs, has filed a complaint with the Petitions Committee of the Delhi Assembly headed by senior Congress MLA S. C. Vats on the issue of inflated bills, fast running meters and harassment by the enforcement wings of the private power companies.
The RWAs are also exploring the option of taking the matter to court as they believe it is an infringement of the Fundamental Rights of individuals.
"The power companies have unleashed a trail of terror in a systematic manner. People are being slapped with inflated bills and then with cases of theft. If they do not compromise they are subjected to unending harassment with the Delhi Government and the DERC looking on as mute spectators,'' Mr. Kaul added.
It is no secret that the performance of the power companies has been dismal, but North Delhi Power Limited (NDPL) has done considerably well in comparison. As for the DERC, not only the RWAs but even the Public Accounts Committee of the Delhi Assembly headed by Dr. Vats has come out strongly against it for being ineffective in solving problems relating to the consumers.
The PAC had stated that the DERC had failed to discharge its duties and it should seek the accountability of the power companies rather than act in their interest.
"There is hardly any accountability in the system. We are accountable to the people of Delhi and have to go among the people to seek votes. This should be kept in mind before arriving at any decision,'' said a senior Minister.
© Copyright 2000 - 2006 The Hindu
Date:26/11/2006 URL: http://www.thehindu.com/2006/11/26/stories/2006112610800400.htm
-----------------------------------
Time-of-day metering in Delhi soon
Staff Reporter
Plan to introduce system draws heavy flak from residents' welfare associations
NEW DELHI: Even as the Delhi Government's Power Department is all set to introduce time-of-day (ToD) metering in the city, residents' welfare associations anticipating a steep increase in electricity charges have sharply criticised the move.
Delhi, which will become the first State in the country to have ToD in the residential sector, will encourage consumers to shift consumption of power from peak to off-peak hours. The incentive to do so will be cheaper rates for power consumed during off-peak hours.
Different tariff slabs
After implementation of ToD metering, there will be different tariff slabs for peak hours, off-peak hours and normal time of the day. Consumers using electricity during peak hours, 6-30 p.m. to 10-30 p.m. will have to pay as much as Rs.6.40 per unit, while off-peak hours, 10-30 p.m. to 6-30 a.m., would have them pay as low as Rs.1.60 per unit.
"We have already had a meeting with the discoms and they have agreed to change the meters to make them compliant with the ToD system. We have been regularly meeting RWAs to explain the concept of ToD metering to them and the response has been good. The Department is now looking forward to the Delhi Electricity Regulatory Commission's approval," said a senior Power Department official.
The Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy Management Centre of Delhi Transco Limited had launched the Delhi Energy Efficiency Programme (DEEP) in association with The Energy and Resources Institute (TERI) in May this year to study the consumption pattern in the domestic sector so that a scheme for implementation of ToD system could be introduced.
Pilot project
The metering, which will be started as a pilot project in three localities in the city, has, however, drawn severe all-round criticism from the RWAs, who have sought a meeting with the DERC on the issue."If this proposal is accepted, electricity bills will shoot up by 20 per cent on an average," said M.K. Choudhary, a former official of Delhi Transco.
He further added: "Remember that the electronic meters are configured to record minute power usage — so at peak times, using even your mobile charger will yield higher readings."Pointing out that ToD is a mechanism designed for industry and not retail customers, Sanjay Kaul president of People's Action said: "A factory owner can start a third shift starting midnight if he saves substantially on power rates, but it is very unlikely that a family will stop using appliances of necessity or start having a bath at 4 a.m. just because power is cheaper and they can save on the geyser. The result will be, as we can all imagine, that power bills will shoot up further."
© Copyright 2000 - 2006 The Hindu
------------------
"Power privatisation model a total failure"
Staff Reporter
Independent audit and CBI probe demanded
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Delhi BJP president lays the blame on the Chief Minister
Entire privatisation process should be reviewed: Bardhan
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
NEW DELHI: Cutting across party lines, political leaders at a meeting here on Thursday strongly criticised the privatisation of the power distribution network in the Capital five years ago and proclaimed that the model had proved a failure.
At the meeting attended by residents' welfare associations, activists, power engineers, trade union members, legal experts and technocrats, the participants described the Delhi privatisation model as a "total failure".
"The all-party meeting was an attempt to evaluate the views of all stakeholders of Delhi and see if we agree on the results of the five years of privatisation. Nobody expressed any satisfaction at all," said Sanjay Kaul of People's Action who conducted the meeting.
"Three proposals were put to the floor and all of these were passed unanimously," he said.
Delhi BJP president Harsh Vardhan spoke disparagingly about almost every aspect of the deal, be it service, billing, fast running meters or power cuts. He pinned the blame on the Chief Minister and accused her of ignoring the consumers' interests.
Communist Party of India general secretary A. B. Bardhan praised the RWAs for having taken the fight to the streets and said a similar agitation must be undertaken to have the entire privatisation process reviewed beginning with the Electricity Act, 2003, which he described as fundamentally flawed.
Congress MLA S.C. Vats said his work as Public Accounts Committee Chairman was to give answers to the citizens about the truth behind the privatisation deal. He said the Electricity Act, 2003, must be reviewed.
The meeting ended with an agreement to put pressure on the Delhi Electricity Regulatory Commission to review the performance of the past five years through an independent audit and force the Government though agitation to order a CBI probe into the entire deal.
© Copyright 2000 - 2006 The Hindu
Date:10/08/2007 URL: http://www.thehindu.com/2007/08/10/stories/2007081059830300.htm
----------------------------------
RWAs complain against inflated power bills Sujay Mehdudia
Delhi Cabinet sentiment reflects the common man's plight
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
The RWAs are also exploring the option of taking the matter to court `The power companies have unleashed a trail of terror in a systematic manner'
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
NEW DELHI: The "strong sentiment'' expressed by the Delhi Cabinet this past week on the "deteriorating power scenario'' in the Capital is reflective of the sentiments of lakhs of consumers who have been undergoing harassment and mental trauma at the hands of indifferent private power companies and an equally indifferent Delhi Electricity Regulatory Commission.
The residents' welfare associations across the city are hardly impressed with the "concern'' shown by the Delhi Cabinet or Chief Minister Sheila Dikshit and have termed the decision to summon the heads of Reliance Energy and Tata Power as a ploy to mislead the people of Delhi.
"Why was Mr. Anil Ambani not summoned in June and July when power cuts had peaked? It is nothing but a façade to hide the misdeeds of the power companies who have been vested with unprecedented powers to harass the common man,'' remarked People's Action president Sanjay Kaul, leading a federation of RWAs in protest against the indifferent attitude of the private power companies.
The United Residents Joint Action (URJA), another platform of RWAs, has filed a complaint with the Petitions Committee of the Delhi Assembly headed by senior Congress MLA S. C. Vats on the issue of inflated bills, fast running meters and harassment by the enforcement wings of the private power companies.
The RWAs are also exploring the option of taking the matter to court as they believe it is an infringement of the Fundamental Rights of individuals.
"The power companies have unleashed a trail of terror in a systematic manner. People are being slapped with inflated bills and then with cases of theft. If they do not compromise they are subjected to unending harassment with the Delhi Government and the DERC looking on as mute spectators,'' Mr. Kaul added.
It is no secret that the performance of the power companies has been dismal, but North Delhi Power Limited (NDPL) has done considerably well in comparison. As for the DERC, not only the RWAs but even the Public Accounts Committee of the Delhi Assembly headed by Dr. Vats has come out strongly against it for being ineffective in solving problems relating to the consumers.
The PAC had stated that the DERC had failed to discharge its duties and it should seek the accountability of the power companies rather than act in their interest.
"There is hardly any accountability in the system. We are accountable to the people of Delhi and have to go among the people to seek votes. This should be kept in mind before arriving at any decision,'' said a senior Minister.
© Copyright 2000 - 2006 The Hindu
Date:26/11/2006 URL: http://www.thehindu.com/2006/11/26/stories/2006112610800400.htm
-----------------------------------
Time-of-day metering in Delhi soon
Staff Reporter
Plan to introduce system draws heavy flak from residents' welfare associations
NEW DELHI: Even as the Delhi Government's Power Department is all set to introduce time-of-day (ToD) metering in the city, residents' welfare associations anticipating a steep increase in electricity charges have sharply criticised the move.
Delhi, which will become the first State in the country to have ToD in the residential sector, will encourage consumers to shift consumption of power from peak to off-peak hours. The incentive to do so will be cheaper rates for power consumed during off-peak hours.
Different tariff slabs
After implementation of ToD metering, there will be different tariff slabs for peak hours, off-peak hours and normal time of the day. Consumers using electricity during peak hours, 6-30 p.m. to 10-30 p.m. will have to pay as much as Rs.6.40 per unit, while off-peak hours, 10-30 p.m. to 6-30 a.m., would have them pay as low as Rs.1.60 per unit.
"We have already had a meeting with the discoms and they have agreed to change the meters to make them compliant with the ToD system. We have been regularly meeting RWAs to explain the concept of ToD metering to them and the response has been good. The Department is now looking forward to the Delhi Electricity Regulatory Commission's approval," said a senior Power Department official.
The Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy Management Centre of Delhi Transco Limited had launched the Delhi Energy Efficiency Programme (DEEP) in association with The Energy and Resources Institute (TERI) in May this year to study the consumption pattern in the domestic sector so that a scheme for implementation of ToD system could be introduced.
Pilot project
The metering, which will be started as a pilot project in three localities in the city, has, however, drawn severe all-round criticism from the RWAs, who have sought a meeting with the DERC on the issue."If this proposal is accepted, electricity bills will shoot up by 20 per cent on an average," said M.K. Choudhary, a former official of Delhi Transco.
He further added: "Remember that the electronic meters are configured to record minute power usage — so at peak times, using even your mobile charger will yield higher readings."Pointing out that ToD is a mechanism designed for industry and not retail customers, Sanjay Kaul president of People's Action said: "A factory owner can start a third shift starting midnight if he saves substantially on power rates, but it is very unlikely that a family will stop using appliances of necessity or start having a bath at 4 a.m. just because power is cheaper and they can save on the geyser. The result will be, as we can all imagine, that power bills will shoot up further."
© Copyright 2000 - 2006 The Hindu
Tuesday, August 28, 2007
Indian Subnational Finances and the IMF
Our ex secretary at the Finance Ministry who was a member of the EFC and maybe even advising the CCEA joined the IMF this year: Adarsh Kishore
- Vinay Baindur
http://www.imf.org/external/pubs/cat/longres.cfm?sk=21235.0
The TFC report is also a case of the Consultants doing a job through IIMA and other places
The summary clearly brings out how the fin coms are an important place for many civil society groups to target so that we can keep a track of this like the 13th FC (which will rear its head anytime). The commercialisation and market orientation is more important and that is most CRUCIAL for the IMF etc . NOW THAT STABILIZATION IS CLOSE TO BEING ACHIEVED how far does this make goal of MDGs and poverty alleviation
So remarkable that the conditions are now not being pushed NOT so much by the IFIs but BY OUR OWN COUNTRY SYSTEMS we can see the examples of EIA and NEP, NURM and UIDSSMT, and also others like TFC etc
Indian Subnational Finances: Recent Performance
Author/Editor: Kishore, Adarsh | Prasad, A.
Authorized for Distribution: August 1, 2007
Electronic Access: Free Full Text (PDF file size is 375KB)
Use the free Adobe Acrobat Reader to view this PDF file.
Disclaimer: This Working Paper should not be reported as representing the views of the IMF. The views expressed in this Working Paper are those of the author(s) and do not necessarily represent those of the IMF or IMF policy. Working Papers describe research in progress by the author(s) and are published to elicit comments and to further debate.
Summary: The fiscal performance of the States in India has been an area of concern for quite some time. The Twelfth Finance Commission (TFC) recommended a three-pronged strategy to alleviate States' fiscal distress, built around greater orientation toward market discipline, incentives for fiscal consolidation targets, and commitment to fiscal correction. We find that States have created fiscal space through raising revenues and reducing and reprioritizing expenditures. Looking ahead, expansion of fiscal space is essential to meet the States' large infrastructure and social needs in order to alleviate bottlenecks to growth. This needs to be accomplished without undermining fiscal sustainability.
- Vinay Baindur
http://www.imf.org/external/pubs/cat/longres.cfm?sk=21235.0
The TFC report is also a case of the Consultants doing a job through IIMA and other places
The summary clearly brings out how the fin coms are an important place for many civil society groups to target so that we can keep a track of this like the 13th FC (which will rear its head anytime). The commercialisation and market orientation is more important and that is most CRUCIAL for the IMF etc . NOW THAT STABILIZATION IS CLOSE TO BEING ACHIEVED how far does this make goal of MDGs and poverty alleviation
So remarkable that the conditions are now not being pushed NOT so much by the IFIs but BY OUR OWN COUNTRY SYSTEMS we can see the examples of EIA and NEP, NURM and UIDSSMT, and also others like TFC etc
Indian Subnational Finances: Recent Performance
Author/Editor: Kishore, Adarsh | Prasad, A.
Authorized for Distribution: August 1, 2007
Electronic Access: Free Full Text (PDF file size is 375KB)
Use the free Adobe Acrobat Reader to view this PDF file.
Disclaimer: This Working Paper should not be reported as representing the views of the IMF. The views expressed in this Working Paper are those of the author(s) and do not necessarily represent those of the IMF or IMF policy. Working Papers describe research in progress by the author(s) and are published to elicit comments and to further debate.
Summary: The fiscal performance of the States in India has been an area of concern for quite some time. The Twelfth Finance Commission (TFC) recommended a three-pronged strategy to alleviate States' fiscal distress, built around greater orientation toward market discipline, incentives for fiscal consolidation targets, and commitment to fiscal correction. We find that States have created fiscal space through raising revenues and reducing and reprioritizing expenditures. Looking ahead, expansion of fiscal space is essential to meet the States' large infrastructure and social needs in order to alleviate bottlenecks to growth. This needs to be accomplished without undermining fiscal sustainability.
Monday, August 27, 2007
Who Wants the World Bank Anyway?
For Immediate Release Deepika D’Souza +91-(0)-9820039557
DATE 2007 Harsh Dobhal +91-(0) 9818569021
Announcing the Independent People’s Tribunal on the World Bank in India
The scandal-ridden World Bank, recently in the headlines for a corruption scandal involving then-President Wolfowitz, will face deep scrutiny when the Independent People’s Tribunal on the World Bank in India opens next month in New Delhi. More than 50 groups from around India will assemble before an international jury to present their grievances against World Bank projects and policies.
“Since Independence, the World Bank has been shaping India’s development agenda. But there has never been a systematic attempt to evaluate it. Since the authorities work hand-in-glove with the Bank, it is we the people who must call the World Bank to account,” says Misha Singh of the Tribunal secretariat. “The Tribunal is an opportunity for people who have been impacted by the World Bank to express their grievances and propose alternatives.”
There are plenty of grievances. In addition to pushing well-known infrastructure projects like the Narmada dams, the World Bank has been instrumental, if less visible, in crafting many of today’s controversial economic policies, such as the privatisation of water supplies. As Bhaskar Goswami says, “Food grain availability in India is at its lowest level since 1973. Farmers and adivasis are being driven off their lands. Everyone is losing access to water and basic services. In short, the rich get richer and the poor get poorer. The policies that create this situation can all be traced back to the World Bank. It is the WB recommendations to the government that laid the foundation for these ill-conceived policies.”
In an effort to broaden the debate in the country, the tribunal also aims to dispute the World Bank’s self-appointed role as the source of all knowledge and expertise on development. “For too many years, the experts told us to take their bitter economic medicine, it will make the economy stronger. But people are losing livelihoods, land, rights, access to education and health care. It is time that we stopped listening to so-called experts and started listening to the common people,” said Deepika D’Souza of the World Bank Tribunal Secretariat. The Tribunal will call on both academics and ordinary people who have been directly affected by World Bank policies and projects.
The Independent People’s Tribunal on the World Bank in India will take place on the campus of Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi, from 21-24 September 2007. For more information, contact:
World Bank Tribunal Secretariat
www.worldbanktribunal.org
secretariat@worldbanktribunal.org
c/o WBT, Flat No. 14, Supreme Enclave,
Mayur Vihar Phase 1, New Delhi 110091
###
DATE 2007 Harsh Dobhal +91-(0) 9818569021
Announcing the Independent People’s Tribunal on the World Bank in India
The scandal-ridden World Bank, recently in the headlines for a corruption scandal involving then-President Wolfowitz, will face deep scrutiny when the Independent People’s Tribunal on the World Bank in India opens next month in New Delhi. More than 50 groups from around India will assemble before an international jury to present their grievances against World Bank projects and policies.
“Since Independence, the World Bank has been shaping India’s development agenda. But there has never been a systematic attempt to evaluate it. Since the authorities work hand-in-glove with the Bank, it is we the people who must call the World Bank to account,” says Misha Singh of the Tribunal secretariat. “The Tribunal is an opportunity for people who have been impacted by the World Bank to express their grievances and propose alternatives.”
There are plenty of grievances. In addition to pushing well-known infrastructure projects like the Narmada dams, the World Bank has been instrumental, if less visible, in crafting many of today’s controversial economic policies, such as the privatisation of water supplies. As Bhaskar Goswami says, “Food grain availability in India is at its lowest level since 1973. Farmers and adivasis are being driven off their lands. Everyone is losing access to water and basic services. In short, the rich get richer and the poor get poorer. The policies that create this situation can all be traced back to the World Bank. It is the WB recommendations to the government that laid the foundation for these ill-conceived policies.”
In an effort to broaden the debate in the country, the tribunal also aims to dispute the World Bank’s self-appointed role as the source of all knowledge and expertise on development. “For too many years, the experts told us to take their bitter economic medicine, it will make the economy stronger. But people are losing livelihoods, land, rights, access to education and health care. It is time that we stopped listening to so-called experts and started listening to the common people,” said Deepika D’Souza of the World Bank Tribunal Secretariat. The Tribunal will call on both academics and ordinary people who have been directly affected by World Bank policies and projects.
The Independent People’s Tribunal on the World Bank in India will take place on the campus of Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi, from 21-24 September 2007. For more information, contact:
World Bank Tribunal Secretariat
www.worldbanktribunal.org
secretariat@worldbanktribunal.org
c/o WBT, Flat No. 14, Supreme Enclave,
Mayur Vihar Phase 1, New Delhi 110091
###
World Bank Wanes in Importance?
The World Bank continues to impact decisions of governments in many ways, amongst them, the restructuring of laws pertaining to private enterprise. Anyone who thinks the World Bank is becoming increasingly insignificant should consider the following article. The point is not the merit or shortcomings of specific reforms, whats at issue is the weight the Banks rating system has in determining government policy.
http://economictimes.indiatimes.com/
Setting_up_business_will_soon_be_easier_for_firms/articleshow/2312831.cms
The Centre will soon inform the World Bank about the reduced procedures so that the bank can incorporate them in its yearly publication that rates countries based on the ease of doing business. The annual report for 2006 and 2007 rates India at 134 among the 175 countries listed. Interestingly, Pakistan is placed well ahead in this list at 74.
Reacting to the World Bank report, the government had set up a committee of secretaries to look into the whole issue. The panel studied procedures adopted and the time taken by the various ministries in giving clearances.
After an elaborate exercise, some new models, which substantially cut the number of procedures and the time taken to complete these, have been adopted. On its part, the ministry of small-scale industry has initiated quicker procedures to help closure of small and medium enterprises that are not registered under the Companies Act 1956.
The cabinet secretary will formally be apprised of the new models this week. The Centre has also written to chief secretaries of all states and union territories to adopt the best practices in other states. Many state governments have responded to this by setting up task forces to reduce procedural hassles.
The World Bank essentially considers 10 criteria to assess the ease of doing business. These are: ease of starting business, getting a licence, getting credit, protecting investors, paying taxes, cross-border trade, enforcing contracts and closing a business.
Judged on these factors, countries like Singapore, Japan, Australia, United States, Britain, Canada and some other European economies are rated at the top. Most emerging economies, like India, do not feature among the top 50.
http://economictimes.indiatimes.com/
Setting_up_business_will_soon_be_easier_for_firms/articleshow/2312831.cms
27 Aug, 2007, 0030 hrs IST,M K VENU,
NEW DELHI: Life will soon be easier for companies that are setting up new businesses. They will have all government clearances in place in just half the time, thanks to a joint initiative by the various ministries involved. The ministries of industry, labour, corporate affairs and finance have worked together to reduce the time taken to obtain various clearances from 305 days to 166 days.
Companies will also be able to avoid some 120 procedures that they have to go through to meet the requirements of the labour, land and revenue departments. The government’s new initiative follows a World Bank report which rates India quite low in the ‘ease of doing business index’.
Apart from registering a new business, companies face a series of procedures like getting approval for Memorandum and Articles of Association, obtaining the unique income-tax numbers (PAN & TAN) and registration for value-added tax. Along with a host of procedures, they also have to establish the employees provident fund, all of which are time-consuming. The government’s attempt is to cut the time considerably.Companies will also be able to avoid some 120 procedures that they have to go through to meet the requirements of the labour, land and revenue departments. The government’s new initiative follows a World Bank report which rates India quite low in the ‘ease of doing business index’.
The Centre will soon inform the World Bank about the reduced procedures so that the bank can incorporate them in its yearly publication that rates countries based on the ease of doing business. The annual report for 2006 and 2007 rates India at 134 among the 175 countries listed. Interestingly, Pakistan is placed well ahead in this list at 74.
Reacting to the World Bank report, the government had set up a committee of secretaries to look into the whole issue. The panel studied procedures adopted and the time taken by the various ministries in giving clearances.
After an elaborate exercise, some new models, which substantially cut the number of procedures and the time taken to complete these, have been adopted. On its part, the ministry of small-scale industry has initiated quicker procedures to help closure of small and medium enterprises that are not registered under the Companies Act 1956.
The cabinet secretary will formally be apprised of the new models this week. The Centre has also written to chief secretaries of all states and union territories to adopt the best practices in other states. Many state governments have responded to this by setting up task forces to reduce procedural hassles.
The World Bank essentially considers 10 criteria to assess the ease of doing business. These are: ease of starting business, getting a licence, getting credit, protecting investors, paying taxes, cross-border trade, enforcing contracts and closing a business.
Judged on these factors, countries like Singapore, Japan, Australia, United States, Britain, Canada and some other European economies are rated at the top. Most emerging economies, like India, do not feature among the top 50.
Sunday, August 26, 2007
Legal Intrusions
An extract from India’s 1991 Structural Adjustment Loan with the IBRD (major lending arm of the World Bank)
A condition of the loan: ‘That the Borrower has introduced in its Parliament a Bill to amend its Sick Industrial Companies Act of 1985 (SICA), satisfactory to the Bank…’ (schedule 4)
Under the agreement, the Bank is given the discretion to withdraw funds if it is not satisfied on evidence satisfactory to it that this has occurred (see schedule 1 para 4 (c))
The point is not the virtues or pitfalls of the Sick Industrial Companies Act of 1985. The incorporation of terms like this represent an explicit circumvention of democratic process and parliamentary accountability. This is just one example. The people India, not the Bank, should stimulate Indian political and policy change. This intrusion must stop!
A condition of the loan: ‘That the Borrower has introduced in its Parliament a Bill to amend its Sick Industrial Companies Act of 1985 (SICA), satisfactory to the Bank…’ (schedule 4)
Under the agreement, the Bank is given the discretion to withdraw funds if it is not satisfied on evidence satisfactory to it that this has occurred (see schedule 1 para 4 (c))
The point is not the virtues or pitfalls of the Sick Industrial Companies Act of 1985. The incorporation of terms like this represent an explicit circumvention of democratic process and parliamentary accountability. This is just one example. The people India, not the Bank, should stimulate Indian political and policy change. This intrusion must stop!
Crime And Reward: Immunity To The World Bank
Crime And Reward: Immunity To The World Bank
Analysis , by Anu Muhammad , 3-October-2005
URL: http://meghbarta.org/nws/nw_main_p02b.php?issueId=7§ionId=30&articleId=75
The Bill and the Questions
The Government of Bangladesh has submitted a bill in the National Parliament on 31 October 2004 seeking legal immunity for multilateral lending agencies, especially the World Bank. Finance Minister M Saifur Rahman introduced the bill under the title "The International Financial Organisations Order (Amendment) Act 2004". According to the press report (New Age, 1 November 2004) the minister insisted in supporting the bill though he did admit that there was no precedence of such immunity. The above bill read, "The Bank shall enjoy immunity from every form of legal process...no action shall be brought against the Bank, by any agency, or by any entity or person, and there shall be recourse to such special procedures for the settlement of controversies between the Bank and the government or the agency or entity or person as the case may be....Property and assets of the Bank shall wheresoever located and by whomsoever held be immune from all forms of seizure, attachment or execution, before the delivery of final judgement against the Bank." No legal action will be allowed against the employees for their activities as long as they act in an official capacity at the directive of the lending agency.
The International Monetary Fund (IMF) and the Asian development Bank (ADB) were earlier granted immunity in 1972 and 1973; the World Bank was thereafter accorded the partial immunity. Now the government of Bangladesh has taken the obliging step not to correct the wrong but to complete the wrong, by giving full immunity to the World Bank.
The World Bank formally asked the government for the legal immunity about three years ago. It was reported that the World Bank (WB) became impatient to obtain a total immunity in Bangladesh. Why? What wrong has it done for which it needs the cover of immunity for saving its skin? Why is the government moving fast to give full fledged immunity to the World Bank? Why does the government need to afford the Bank protection? What makes the champion of transparency and development nervous of the court and public scrutiny? Is it only to keep the reported internal irregularities under carpet or something more? We are concerned for reasons I would like to explain.
The Projects of Development or Destruction?
Since 1972 the World Bank along with IMF, ADB and other international agencies has been playing a leading role in formulating policies and monitoring implementation of its agenda. It has been working in different ways to influence the direction of the economy of countries like Bangladesh according to the needs and strategies of global power.
We have thousands of projects conceived and monitored by the World Bank and/or its allies in different fields. The projects for energy development, poverty reduction, forestation, flood control and irrigation, education, health, industry, financial sector and what not? We are unwittingly overburdened by unproductive loans whose interest servicing takes an ever increasing toll of our hard earned foreign currencies. But what do the projects brings us? What benefits come from these projects? We have piles of projects: and we have more and more millions of people living under poverty line; we have permanent water logging and more frequent floods in the wake of flood control projects; we have arsenic in the water all across the country after successful and failed implementation of projects of ground water; we get monocrop after losing diverse agriculture and boom in poisonous production through implementing projects in agriculture; we lost our authority over our natural gas resources and we have to pay more for gas and electricity after implementation of energy projects; we find huge coastal area permanently damaged in the wake of shrimp projects; we undergo loss of natural forests because of implementing foreign currency earning projects; we have sick and decaying public sector education and health to see growth of handicapped but expensive private sector, we find basic industry like steel mills and large jute mills shut down after implementing projects aimed at economic growth and industrialization! People have been suffering, material and human loss is unaccountable. People of Bangladesh are being made more debt-shackled for these projects and more vulnerable. But, we know, there are beneficiaries of these projects too. The rich and powerful, local and foreign, have been reaping a bonanza from these projects. The vulgar rise of super rich in a 'poor' country has direct links with these projects.
Then who will be accountable for the damages wrought by these projects? What about the evaluation of the past disasters for avoiding their repeat? No money, no initiative for that from the powerful. The bigger the projects, the better since it means more money in pocket, more expensive cars, and more indulgent lives for consultants, commission agents-ministers-bureaucrats and business elites. Projects like the above ensure market for big corporate bodies, projects help to expand space for them, they ensure life long heavenly life for international consultants and bureaucrats of the agencies like the World Bank. In the latest move by the agency, PRSP [read: poverty re(pro)duction strategy paper], a new comprehensive assault on the people is on the making in a similar line of the 'development efforts' so far. The local beneficiaries are also excited with starry eyes about the prospects.
Steps Towards Grabbing
We have massive evidence to expose the real aim of the projects and the face of the development agencies. Earlier, I discussed on manufacturing sector ( Closure of manufacturing units: victory of Anti-Industrial Development Projects?), water and flood control projects (Projects of Mass Destruction) and on Foreign Direct Investment (Global coalition and FDI) where I found the World Bank as a key player behind disastrous development. Here let me shed some light on a specific area: energy sector the area of power and natural gas to understand the steps of the agency.
Elaborate discourse by the World Bank on Energy sector of Bangladesh was first made in 1982. It was a report of the Joint World Bank/UNDP Energy Sector Assessment Program. The report was kept secret in the same line as most of other reports of these agencies. This report was based on the findings of the Energy Assessment Mission undertaken during October 1981. The report seemed firm about the size of the gas reserves, even though no scientific corroboration was cited. Even 10tcf gas was considered as "substantial economically recoverable natural gas reserves" which according to their estimate "at present consumption levels would last for several decades." The report also suggested creating an atmosphere for entry of multinational oil companies. Moreover, it continued, since "the supply of gas is likely to remain well in excess of Bangladesh's expected internal needs for a substantial period of time" they offered different export options including "export of gas through a pipeline to India". So, the issue of disastrous production sharing contracts and exporting gas is not a recent phenomenon, the option was prescribed two decades ago by the World Bank et al.
A similar scenario can be seen in power generation and distribution. How the Government, Rural Electrification Board (REB) and Palli Bidyut Samity (PBS), have been coming into terms and where the World Bank and its window International Development Association (IDA) stand in the process are the matters of importance to understand the 'development' in Power sector. Both REB and PBS were born through earlier projects. Agreements with IDA and undertakings obtained from the government might help in this regard. According to the agreements, the report of the World Bank of 1982 says, "(1) GOB will lend Credit proceeds to REB, and REB will transfer assets to PBSs, on terms satisfactory to IDA, and the local component of project cost will be provided by GOB to REB as a grant.... (2) GOB will cover any deficit from REB's operation in future. (3) GOB will initially subsidize the difference between an agreed bulk tariff for BPDB supply to PBSs, and PBS payments based on their ability to recover costs, according to a formula satisfactory to IDA. (4) GOB will submit to IDA, by December 31, 1982, a satisfactory formula to calculate and adjust the BPDB bulk tariff to PBSs, and BPDB to implement it thereafter". The agreement confirmed all conditionality of the World Bank to begin a 'power transmission network' with the Government and the BPDB as the bearer of all excess costs 'satisfactory to IDA'. Huge subsidy from the people to the corporate bodies!
In October 1996, as a follow-up of similar other projects, the Government of Bangladesh approved a private sector power generation policy (PPGP). Its essence was that new power generation capacity would be created through multinational corporations in power sector usually called as Independent Power Producer (IPP). And the new power generators would be constructed on a Build- Own- Operate (BOO) basis. Although there was "absence of prior experience by the Power Cell (a newly set window under energy ministry, GOB) in dealing with IPP projects" projects have been taken temporarily by the Bangladesh Power Development Board (BPDB) "in inviting and finalizing bids from IPPs". Finally, the World Bank made its 'expectation' clear that in the future only the Power Cell would be processing Independent Power Producer projects.
To make investment in Bangladesh's power sector lucrative for multinational corporations, the World Bank offered a number of prescriptions in 1997. These included: (1) the commercialization of BPDB's generation assets and establishment of profit centers; (2) the commercialization and corporatization of the distribution units; (3) private sector participation by way of rehabilitation, operation and maintenance (ROM) contracts in selected profit centers; and (4) BPDB's proposed direct investment in four public sector power generation projects (Barapukuria coal based, Shahjibazar, Baghabari, Sylhet gas turbines) to be postponed and these to be carried out through IPPs. These asked, in clear terms, to dismantle another public sector organization and pave the path for the multinational companies in power sector, i.e., IPPs and to subsidize these efforts by public money.
Things proceeded accordingly. After IPPs were given contracts the cost of electricity to the citizens of Bangladesh, as happened with the gas, also increased by more than 200 percent. And similar to the experience of the public institution for gas exploration and distribution (Petrobangla), which was given the burden to purchase gas from multinational oil companies at a higher price, in foreign exchange, BPDB, another public institution for power production and distribution, was also given the same burden. As a consequence, Bangladesh Power Development Board shared the fate of Petrobangla in incurring losses. This pattern was already evident by 1998. Since then, the World Bank and the Asian Development Bank have applied pressure to ensure payments accruing to the multinational corporations. This is usual lobbying.
It should not be regarded surprising that the Bank has maintained silence on the compensation payment from UNOCAL, US oil giant, to Bangladesh which has been outstanding for many years now amounting to more than tk 60 billion. On the contrary, the Bank has applied inordinate pressure to close down Adamjee jute mills and boat about 100 thousand people down under poverty line on sham accusation of loss making of tk 12 billion in 30 years!
Since mid 90s, foreign direct investment increased dramatically. Presence of Multinational Corporations (MNCs) in gas, electricity, hybrid and telecommunication became visible, and new contracts were being signed in gas, telecommunication and power sectors. After working long to pave the way for this anti-development foreign direct investment, the World Bank shifted its emphasis for gas sector. In 1999, the World Bank stated that the nature of foreign direct investment "has implied little augmentation of foreign exchange reserves", because, "the bulk of FDI in the power sector so far is made up of imports (e.g. pre-fabricated barge mounted power plants); so are capital costs of IOCs engaged in the gas sector, and much of the foreign investment and lending in the telecom sector finance imports of telecommunications equipment".
The World Bank, therefore, made it clear that, "the import intensity of FDI inflows and subsequent profit repatriation and interest payments imply a worsening current account deficit associated with FDI." In order to understand reasons behind World Bank's unusual recognition of adverse effects of foreign direct investment in Bangladesh one has to go further to read their suggestion: "there is no discernible accumulation of foreign exchange reserves in the absence of gas exports". The prescription offered in 1982, i.e., export of gas, appeared as a compulsion in 1999.
Therefore, if we sketch the steps taken by the World Bank and its allies in the energy sector we find the following:
Step 1: Study on Energy to provide a policy prescription to restructure and downsize public sector organizations in order to create space for others.
Step 2: Argument followed that the foreign private investment would provide an inflow of foreign currency, would ensure remarkable development of the energy sector and would contribute to develop other sectors as well. Precondition of this was to downsize or dismantling public institutions.
Step 3: Constant advocacy for raising price of gas and electricity.
Step 4: Gas blocks awarded to the Multinational Corporations. According to the contract, Bangladesh is bound to purchase its own gas with more than double of present price and with foreign currency. National exploration agency has been kept idle. Budget deficit and negative effect on foreign exchange reserve increased. Similar things happened in power sector.
Step 5: Further increase of the price of gas and power, export of gas are prescribed to avert further crisis and to ensure further development.
The results of these steps have been disastrous for the economy and the people. Because, (1) price of gas and power on a continuous increase, as a result of that (2) cost of production in every level increased which resulted fall in competitiveness of Bangladeshi goods; (3) hard earned currency are being used to purchase gas and electricity which could be bought with local currency at a much cheaper rate (4) dismantling of local production skill and exploration establishment; (5) losses of BPDB and Petrobangla becoming huge; (6) common property becomes private property being used to maximize profit and (7) public resource like natural gas becomes huge liability.
This is a pattern of working of the World Bank and its allies, a 'road map' to ensure gravitation of businesses to big corporate bodies and yet creating and trumpeting a myth that they are working for the people and development of the poor countries.
USGAO reports on the US body
Nobody can deny, in the face of overwhelming facts and evidence that the World Bank, despite its rhetoric, is effectively an extension of US administration. It was born in the US, it is compulsorily headed by a US citizen and all its decisions are influenced or monitored by the US administration, the US treasury in particular. This assertion is documented by a report prepared by United States General Accountant Office (USGAO) that investigated the World Bank's operations and policy implementation performance. The report says that the World Bank operations support the US economic and foreign policy. It shows the link between the Bank and the US government clear, "through the Secretary of the Treasury and the US Executive Director, the United States influences the Bank to take actions consistent with the US post-Cold War foreign policy agenda.... The Bank promotes economic development consistent with the US interests". According to the report published in the US media "for every $1 contributed to the World Bank and IDA over the years, the country (US) got roughly $2 back in business for American firms that bid on contracts involved in providing this aid." This is much more in many cases in Bangladesh. The World Bank, therefore, can be viewed as the US institution, that takes care of the US corporate investment, and works as an instrument to bargain with different countries to protect the US imperial interest. So, the Bank, in other words, is obligated not to promote any kind of development, which is inconsistent with the US and other corporate interests.
The World Bank's project performance reviews often present devastating pictures. Such a conclusion was also noted by the USGAO. After investigating many projects around the world the organization also observed that, "in terms of achieving project objectives, the Bank's rate of success is much higher in meeting physical objectives (e.g., completing buildings and administering social services) than in improving market and policy conditions for economic growth." In fact, the discussions on success or failure of projects sometime ignore the World Bank's agenda. The agenda is acknowledged in World Bank's own documents that indicate that the Bank was structured to 'promote private foreign investment'. The documents continued by stating that the Bank "has many of the characteristics of a private sector institution. It is organized as a stock corporation, with voting rights proportional to equity investment. It finances itself in private capital markets, through medium-and long term bond issues on commercial terms, applying conservative financial policies that have earned and preserved a triple-A bond rating...It has consistently earned a profit over $1billion "
Corruption and Immunity to the Coalition
The World Bank always tries to make a point against corruption, tries to show that they are pursuing programmes to curb corruption in Bangladesh and elsewhere. Lie! History and geography show that never and nowhere the World Bank feels happy with the governments who really want to be free from corruption. Corruption is all pervasive in Bangladesh, but that is exactly the reason the Bank finds here a very strong support base. How can institutions like this survive without the life support of the corrupts? How can otherwise the pernicious projects World Bank pursues be endorsed?
In fact the World Bank does enjoy the status of 'sovereign body', entering everywhere but with no accountability. It appears that the agency needs now to have that status fully legalised. The present government's move to give immunity to the World Bank is not inconsistent. It is also consistent with its recent agreement with the US government to give immunity to the US nationals (especially US Army) from any trial for their crime (planning to commit?) in Bangladesh. Government spokesmen, ministers Saifur Rahman and Moudud Ahmed in particular, strongly defended the immunity move recently by saying that responsibility of all the projects lie with the government. Very much true, indeed! The governments, present and past, are primarily responsible for all disasters made through development projects and otherwise. They must explain and should stand before trial. Then why the immunity law? Why is legal process being blocked? Let the court identify responsible parties and the degree of their crime.
We understand their problem. A coalition is there which smells trouble in the air. World Bank along with other agencies, local policymakers i.e., ministers, bureaucrats, consultants, commission agents are the honourable members of the coalition. It seems that all of those need to keep their misdeeds out of bounds for public scrutiny; they need to seal for ever the possibility of opening the Pandora's Box to show the ugly faces!
But even if the government gives immunity people will not. There are number of public trials already held in different parts of the world. The number will increase at a faster rate. The global institutions like the World Bank, by their worldwide similar operations, provoke affected billions of people to raise voice against them, to create global resistance. Governmental immunity will not be able to save them from that people power nor will the local goons, the beneficiary groups, be spared for ever.
Refernces:
Anu Muhammad(2004): "Bangladesh Waterlogged Again", Evonomic And Political Weekly, July 31-August 6.
..........................(2004): "Foreign Direct Investment and Utilization of Natural Gas in Bangladesh" in
http://www.networkideas.org/featart/jul2004/fa26_FDI_Gas.htm
...........................(2003): "Bangladesh's Integration into Global Capitalist System: Policy Direction and the Role of Global Institutions", in Matiur Rahman (ed) Globalisation, Environmental Crisis and Social Change in Bangladesh, UPL, Dhaka.
...........................(2002): "Closure of Adamjee Jute Mills: Victory of Anti-Industrial Development (AID) Project?" Daily Star, July 23.
World Bank and UNDP (1982): Bangladesh: Issues and Options in the Energy Sector.
World Bank (1997): Public Expenditure Review 1997 Update. Making the Best Use of Public Resources, August.
The World Bank & The Asian Development Bank (1998): Bangladesh: Economic Trends and the Policy Agenda, May.
World Bank (1999) : Foreign Direct Investment in Bangladesh: Issues of long run Sustainability. October
Analysis , by Anu Muhammad , 3-October-2005
URL: http://meghbarta.org/nws/nw_main_p02b.php?issueId=7§ionId=30&articleId=75
The Bill and the Questions
The Government of Bangladesh has submitted a bill in the National Parliament on 31 October 2004 seeking legal immunity for multilateral lending agencies, especially the World Bank. Finance Minister M Saifur Rahman introduced the bill under the title "The International Financial Organisations Order (Amendment) Act 2004". According to the press report (New Age, 1 November 2004) the minister insisted in supporting the bill though he did admit that there was no precedence of such immunity. The above bill read, "The Bank shall enjoy immunity from every form of legal process...no action shall be brought against the Bank, by any agency, or by any entity or person, and there shall be recourse to such special procedures for the settlement of controversies between the Bank and the government or the agency or entity or person as the case may be....Property and assets of the Bank shall wheresoever located and by whomsoever held be immune from all forms of seizure, attachment or execution, before the delivery of final judgement against the Bank." No legal action will be allowed against the employees for their activities as long as they act in an official capacity at the directive of the lending agency.
The International Monetary Fund (IMF) and the Asian development Bank (ADB) were earlier granted immunity in 1972 and 1973; the World Bank was thereafter accorded the partial immunity. Now the government of Bangladesh has taken the obliging step not to correct the wrong but to complete the wrong, by giving full immunity to the World Bank.
The World Bank formally asked the government for the legal immunity about three years ago. It was reported that the World Bank (WB) became impatient to obtain a total immunity in Bangladesh. Why? What wrong has it done for which it needs the cover of immunity for saving its skin? Why is the government moving fast to give full fledged immunity to the World Bank? Why does the government need to afford the Bank protection? What makes the champion of transparency and development nervous of the court and public scrutiny? Is it only to keep the reported internal irregularities under carpet or something more? We are concerned for reasons I would like to explain.
The Projects of Development or Destruction?
Since 1972 the World Bank along with IMF, ADB and other international agencies has been playing a leading role in formulating policies and monitoring implementation of its agenda. It has been working in different ways to influence the direction of the economy of countries like Bangladesh according to the needs and strategies of global power.
We have thousands of projects conceived and monitored by the World Bank and/or its allies in different fields. The projects for energy development, poverty reduction, forestation, flood control and irrigation, education, health, industry, financial sector and what not? We are unwittingly overburdened by unproductive loans whose interest servicing takes an ever increasing toll of our hard earned foreign currencies. But what do the projects brings us? What benefits come from these projects? We have piles of projects: and we have more and more millions of people living under poverty line; we have permanent water logging and more frequent floods in the wake of flood control projects; we have arsenic in the water all across the country after successful and failed implementation of projects of ground water; we get monocrop after losing diverse agriculture and boom in poisonous production through implementing projects in agriculture; we lost our authority over our natural gas resources and we have to pay more for gas and electricity after implementation of energy projects; we find huge coastal area permanently damaged in the wake of shrimp projects; we undergo loss of natural forests because of implementing foreign currency earning projects; we have sick and decaying public sector education and health to see growth of handicapped but expensive private sector, we find basic industry like steel mills and large jute mills shut down after implementing projects aimed at economic growth and industrialization! People have been suffering, material and human loss is unaccountable. People of Bangladesh are being made more debt-shackled for these projects and more vulnerable. But, we know, there are beneficiaries of these projects too. The rich and powerful, local and foreign, have been reaping a bonanza from these projects. The vulgar rise of super rich in a 'poor' country has direct links with these projects.
Then who will be accountable for the damages wrought by these projects? What about the evaluation of the past disasters for avoiding their repeat? No money, no initiative for that from the powerful. The bigger the projects, the better since it means more money in pocket, more expensive cars, and more indulgent lives for consultants, commission agents-ministers-bureaucrats and business elites. Projects like the above ensure market for big corporate bodies, projects help to expand space for them, they ensure life long heavenly life for international consultants and bureaucrats of the agencies like the World Bank. In the latest move by the agency, PRSP [read: poverty re(pro)duction strategy paper], a new comprehensive assault on the people is on the making in a similar line of the 'development efforts' so far. The local beneficiaries are also excited with starry eyes about the prospects.
Steps Towards Grabbing
We have massive evidence to expose the real aim of the projects and the face of the development agencies. Earlier, I discussed on manufacturing sector ( Closure of manufacturing units: victory of Anti-Industrial Development Projects?), water and flood control projects (Projects of Mass Destruction) and on Foreign Direct Investment (Global coalition and FDI) where I found the World Bank as a key player behind disastrous development. Here let me shed some light on a specific area: energy sector the area of power and natural gas to understand the steps of the agency.
Elaborate discourse by the World Bank on Energy sector of Bangladesh was first made in 1982. It was a report of the Joint World Bank/UNDP Energy Sector Assessment Program. The report was kept secret in the same line as most of other reports of these agencies. This report was based on the findings of the Energy Assessment Mission undertaken during October 1981. The report seemed firm about the size of the gas reserves, even though no scientific corroboration was cited. Even 10tcf gas was considered as "substantial economically recoverable natural gas reserves" which according to their estimate "at present consumption levels would last for several decades." The report also suggested creating an atmosphere for entry of multinational oil companies. Moreover, it continued, since "the supply of gas is likely to remain well in excess of Bangladesh's expected internal needs for a substantial period of time" they offered different export options including "export of gas through a pipeline to India". So, the issue of disastrous production sharing contracts and exporting gas is not a recent phenomenon, the option was prescribed two decades ago by the World Bank et al.
A similar scenario can be seen in power generation and distribution. How the Government, Rural Electrification Board (REB) and Palli Bidyut Samity (PBS), have been coming into terms and where the World Bank and its window International Development Association (IDA) stand in the process are the matters of importance to understand the 'development' in Power sector. Both REB and PBS were born through earlier projects. Agreements with IDA and undertakings obtained from the government might help in this regard. According to the agreements, the report of the World Bank of 1982 says, "(1) GOB will lend Credit proceeds to REB, and REB will transfer assets to PBSs, on terms satisfactory to IDA, and the local component of project cost will be provided by GOB to REB as a grant.... (2) GOB will cover any deficit from REB's operation in future. (3) GOB will initially subsidize the difference between an agreed bulk tariff for BPDB supply to PBSs, and PBS payments based on their ability to recover costs, according to a formula satisfactory to IDA. (4) GOB will submit to IDA, by December 31, 1982, a satisfactory formula to calculate and adjust the BPDB bulk tariff to PBSs, and BPDB to implement it thereafter". The agreement confirmed all conditionality of the World Bank to begin a 'power transmission network' with the Government and the BPDB as the bearer of all excess costs 'satisfactory to IDA'. Huge subsidy from the people to the corporate bodies!
In October 1996, as a follow-up of similar other projects, the Government of Bangladesh approved a private sector power generation policy (PPGP). Its essence was that new power generation capacity would be created through multinational corporations in power sector usually called as Independent Power Producer (IPP). And the new power generators would be constructed on a Build- Own- Operate (BOO) basis. Although there was "absence of prior experience by the Power Cell (a newly set window under energy ministry, GOB) in dealing with IPP projects" projects have been taken temporarily by the Bangladesh Power Development Board (BPDB) "in inviting and finalizing bids from IPPs". Finally, the World Bank made its 'expectation' clear that in the future only the Power Cell would be processing Independent Power Producer projects.
To make investment in Bangladesh's power sector lucrative for multinational corporations, the World Bank offered a number of prescriptions in 1997. These included: (1) the commercialization of BPDB's generation assets and establishment of profit centers; (2) the commercialization and corporatization of the distribution units; (3) private sector participation by way of rehabilitation, operation and maintenance (ROM) contracts in selected profit centers; and (4) BPDB's proposed direct investment in four public sector power generation projects (Barapukuria coal based, Shahjibazar, Baghabari, Sylhet gas turbines) to be postponed and these to be carried out through IPPs. These asked, in clear terms, to dismantle another public sector organization and pave the path for the multinational companies in power sector, i.e., IPPs and to subsidize these efforts by public money.
Things proceeded accordingly. After IPPs were given contracts the cost of electricity to the citizens of Bangladesh, as happened with the gas, also increased by more than 200 percent. And similar to the experience of the public institution for gas exploration and distribution (Petrobangla), which was given the burden to purchase gas from multinational oil companies at a higher price, in foreign exchange, BPDB, another public institution for power production and distribution, was also given the same burden. As a consequence, Bangladesh Power Development Board shared the fate of Petrobangla in incurring losses. This pattern was already evident by 1998. Since then, the World Bank and the Asian Development Bank have applied pressure to ensure payments accruing to the multinational corporations. This is usual lobbying.
It should not be regarded surprising that the Bank has maintained silence on the compensation payment from UNOCAL, US oil giant, to Bangladesh which has been outstanding for many years now amounting to more than tk 60 billion. On the contrary, the Bank has applied inordinate pressure to close down Adamjee jute mills and boat about 100 thousand people down under poverty line on sham accusation of loss making of tk 12 billion in 30 years!
Since mid 90s, foreign direct investment increased dramatically. Presence of Multinational Corporations (MNCs) in gas, electricity, hybrid and telecommunication became visible, and new contracts were being signed in gas, telecommunication and power sectors. After working long to pave the way for this anti-development foreign direct investment, the World Bank shifted its emphasis for gas sector. In 1999, the World Bank stated that the nature of foreign direct investment "has implied little augmentation of foreign exchange reserves", because, "the bulk of FDI in the power sector so far is made up of imports (e.g. pre-fabricated barge mounted power plants); so are capital costs of IOCs engaged in the gas sector, and much of the foreign investment and lending in the telecom sector finance imports of telecommunications equipment".
The World Bank, therefore, made it clear that, "the import intensity of FDI inflows and subsequent profit repatriation and interest payments imply a worsening current account deficit associated with FDI." In order to understand reasons behind World Bank's unusual recognition of adverse effects of foreign direct investment in Bangladesh one has to go further to read their suggestion: "there is no discernible accumulation of foreign exchange reserves in the absence of gas exports". The prescription offered in 1982, i.e., export of gas, appeared as a compulsion in 1999.
Therefore, if we sketch the steps taken by the World Bank and its allies in the energy sector we find the following:
Step 1: Study on Energy to provide a policy prescription to restructure and downsize public sector organizations in order to create space for others.
Step 2: Argument followed that the foreign private investment would provide an inflow of foreign currency, would ensure remarkable development of the energy sector and would contribute to develop other sectors as well. Precondition of this was to downsize or dismantling public institutions.
Step 3: Constant advocacy for raising price of gas and electricity.
Step 4: Gas blocks awarded to the Multinational Corporations. According to the contract, Bangladesh is bound to purchase its own gas with more than double of present price and with foreign currency. National exploration agency has been kept idle. Budget deficit and negative effect on foreign exchange reserve increased. Similar things happened in power sector.
Step 5: Further increase of the price of gas and power, export of gas are prescribed to avert further crisis and to ensure further development.
The results of these steps have been disastrous for the economy and the people. Because, (1) price of gas and power on a continuous increase, as a result of that (2) cost of production in every level increased which resulted fall in competitiveness of Bangladeshi goods; (3) hard earned currency are being used to purchase gas and electricity which could be bought with local currency at a much cheaper rate (4) dismantling of local production skill and exploration establishment; (5) losses of BPDB and Petrobangla becoming huge; (6) common property becomes private property being used to maximize profit and (7) public resource like natural gas becomes huge liability.
This is a pattern of working of the World Bank and its allies, a 'road map' to ensure gravitation of businesses to big corporate bodies and yet creating and trumpeting a myth that they are working for the people and development of the poor countries.
USGAO reports on the US body
Nobody can deny, in the face of overwhelming facts and evidence that the World Bank, despite its rhetoric, is effectively an extension of US administration. It was born in the US, it is compulsorily headed by a US citizen and all its decisions are influenced or monitored by the US administration, the US treasury in particular. This assertion is documented by a report prepared by United States General Accountant Office (USGAO) that investigated the World Bank's operations and policy implementation performance. The report says that the World Bank operations support the US economic and foreign policy. It shows the link between the Bank and the US government clear, "through the Secretary of the Treasury and the US Executive Director, the United States influences the Bank to take actions consistent with the US post-Cold War foreign policy agenda.... The Bank promotes economic development consistent with the US interests". According to the report published in the US media "for every $1 contributed to the World Bank and IDA over the years, the country (US) got roughly $2 back in business for American firms that bid on contracts involved in providing this aid." This is much more in many cases in Bangladesh. The World Bank, therefore, can be viewed as the US institution, that takes care of the US corporate investment, and works as an instrument to bargain with different countries to protect the US imperial interest. So, the Bank, in other words, is obligated not to promote any kind of development, which is inconsistent with the US and other corporate interests.
The World Bank's project performance reviews often present devastating pictures. Such a conclusion was also noted by the USGAO. After investigating many projects around the world the organization also observed that, "in terms of achieving project objectives, the Bank's rate of success is much higher in meeting physical objectives (e.g., completing buildings and administering social services) than in improving market and policy conditions for economic growth." In fact, the discussions on success or failure of projects sometime ignore the World Bank's agenda. The agenda is acknowledged in World Bank's own documents that indicate that the Bank was structured to 'promote private foreign investment'. The documents continued by stating that the Bank "has many of the characteristics of a private sector institution. It is organized as a stock corporation, with voting rights proportional to equity investment. It finances itself in private capital markets, through medium-and long term bond issues on commercial terms, applying conservative financial policies that have earned and preserved a triple-A bond rating...It has consistently earned a profit over $1billion "
Corruption and Immunity to the Coalition
The World Bank always tries to make a point against corruption, tries to show that they are pursuing programmes to curb corruption in Bangladesh and elsewhere. Lie! History and geography show that never and nowhere the World Bank feels happy with the governments who really want to be free from corruption. Corruption is all pervasive in Bangladesh, but that is exactly the reason the Bank finds here a very strong support base. How can institutions like this survive without the life support of the corrupts? How can otherwise the pernicious projects World Bank pursues be endorsed?
In fact the World Bank does enjoy the status of 'sovereign body', entering everywhere but with no accountability. It appears that the agency needs now to have that status fully legalised. The present government's move to give immunity to the World Bank is not inconsistent. It is also consistent with its recent agreement with the US government to give immunity to the US nationals (especially US Army) from any trial for their crime (planning to commit?) in Bangladesh. Government spokesmen, ministers Saifur Rahman and Moudud Ahmed in particular, strongly defended the immunity move recently by saying that responsibility of all the projects lie with the government. Very much true, indeed! The governments, present and past, are primarily responsible for all disasters made through development projects and otherwise. They must explain and should stand before trial. Then why the immunity law? Why is legal process being blocked? Let the court identify responsible parties and the degree of their crime.
We understand their problem. A coalition is there which smells trouble in the air. World Bank along with other agencies, local policymakers i.e., ministers, bureaucrats, consultants, commission agents are the honourable members of the coalition. It seems that all of those need to keep their misdeeds out of bounds for public scrutiny; they need to seal for ever the possibility of opening the Pandora's Box to show the ugly faces!
But even if the government gives immunity people will not. There are number of public trials already held in different parts of the world. The number will increase at a faster rate. The global institutions like the World Bank, by their worldwide similar operations, provoke affected billions of people to raise voice against them, to create global resistance. Governmental immunity will not be able to save them from that people power nor will the local goons, the beneficiary groups, be spared for ever.
Refernces:
Anu Muhammad(2004): "Bangladesh Waterlogged Again", Evonomic And Political Weekly, July 31-August 6.
..........................(2004): "Foreign Direct Investment and Utilization of Natural Gas in Bangladesh" in
http://www.networkideas.org/featart/jul2004/fa26_FDI_Gas.htm
...........................(2003): "Bangladesh's Integration into Global Capitalist System: Policy Direction and the Role of Global Institutions", in Matiur Rahman (ed) Globalisation, Environmental Crisis and Social Change in Bangladesh, UPL, Dhaka.
...........................(2002): "Closure of Adamjee Jute Mills: Victory of Anti-Industrial Development (AID) Project?" Daily Star, July 23.
World Bank and UNDP (1982): Bangladesh: Issues and Options in the Energy Sector.
World Bank (1997): Public Expenditure Review 1997 Update. Making the Best Use of Public Resources, August.
The World Bank & The Asian Development Bank (1998): Bangladesh: Economic Trends and the Policy Agenda, May.
World Bank (1999) : Foreign Direct Investment in Bangladesh: Issues of long run Sustainability. October
Friday, August 24, 2007
And Still More Loan Conditionalities
| A New project worth 1.6bn tied to YET MORE changes in India's laws. The Independent People's Tribunal on the World Bank in India will explore this avenue (policy lending) by which the nations governance structures are undermined and the bank and its beneficiaries open up avenues for private capital. http://economictimes.indiatimes.com/Finance/ ADB_World_Bank_to_give_16_bn_aid_to_India/articleshow/2281645.cms ADB, World Bank to give $1.6 bn aid to India | ||||
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NEW DELHI: Asian Development Bank and World Bank have agreed to provide financial assistance of $1.6 billion for strengthening the rural cooperative credit structure in the country, the Rajya Sabha was informed on Tuesday.
Of the total, ADB would give one billion dollars while the rest would be provided by World Bank, Minister of State for Finance Pawan Kumar Bansal said in a written reply.
The World Bank assistance is proposed in the form of loan of US 300 million from International Bank for Reconstruction and Development (IBRD) and a credit of USD 300 million from International Development Assistance (IDA, he added.
The government has approved a Rs 13,596 crore revival package to strengthen Short Term Rural Cooperative Credit Structure (STCCS), comprising state cooperative banks (SCBs), district central cooperative banks (DCCBs) and primary agriculture credit societies (PACS), Bansal said.
States willing to implement the package are required to sign a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) with central government and NABARD for carrying out certain legal and institutional reforms.
In order to ensure that STCCS continues on sound financial managerial and governance norms, technical assistance is to be provided to upgrade institutional and human resources, computerisation and setting up proper internal control and accounting systems.
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