Time to say no to WB conditionalities

The World Bank president, Robert Zoellick, during his two-day visit of
Bangladesh, which ended Sunday evening, said loan conditionalities –
one of the major reasons of discontent across the world – were in fact
needed to ensure that the bank's was not 'stolen'. He insisted that
procurement regulations had to be followed by way of examples. This
was quite evidently to counter the suggestions of civil society
representatives who had met Zoellick during his visit. Civil society
has rightly questioned the necessity of lending agency funds being
pegged with conditionalities as these are seen to have a debilitating
effect on the economy while it erodes and in fact undermines the
government's sovereignty in policymaking. It has been a long standing
demand of activists and a large section of academics that the
adherence to certain prescriptions should not be the basis for
receiving lending agency funds. Instead the basis should be
achievement of certain development indicators such as disparity,
literacy, calorie intake, and child mortality.

As such, it is demanded that the lending agencies allow their clients
a free hand in developing their own policies with meaningful public
involvement which is the only means to ensure complete ownership of
the development strategy. It would then be more useful and effective
than coercing countries to formulate their poverty reduction strategy
'guided' by the lending agencies and authored by quarters faithful to
the preferred to school of neoliberal economics dictating free market,
liberalisation and privatisation. We stress that it should not be the
concern of the lending agencies whether the school or the hospital is
under private ownership or run by the state as long as the students
are educated and patients cured.

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