THE WORLD BANK AND THE IMF/123approach, and the pressures applied on Bank associates for them to
draw up and promote expensive projects to borrower-countries, led
these countries to take on excessive debt.
During the first 20 years of its existence, the World Bank (IBRD and
IDA) loaned out a total of only S10.7 billion. During McNamara's
first five years as president, from 1968 to 1973, loan totals increased
at a near exponential rate. The Bank backed projects worth SI3.4
billion over these five years (George and Sabelli, 1994; McNamara,
1973).
McNamara had a near-fanatical belief in quantitative methods and
administrative models seen as universally valid and capable of
solving the whole range of problems. At the beginning of the 1960s,
he said: 'Running any department of an organisation is exactly the
same, whether one is dealing with the Ford Motor Company, the
Catholic Church or the Ministry of Defense ... At a certain stage, all
problems are the same.' In 1967, he said, 'Management is the way
social, economic and political change - indeed, change of all kinds -
is spread throughout society.'
McNamara saw himself as a 'development planner' (McNamara,
1973). In his eyes, the World Bank was playing a 'vanguard' role in
development assistance by planning it from start to finish.
The planning mechanism was central to his approach, as set out
in his 1973 book: the Bank should lay down effective methods for
'family planning and for the public administration responsible for
population control'; the Green Revolution begun in the mid-1960s
should be better planned across the board; planning for major public
works would provide work to the unemployed and build up infra
structure.
He also got the Bank to draw up plans for massive five-year loans
to borrower countries. These plans were detailed in the Country
Programming Papers, which set objectives and priorities for all the
Bank's lending to a given country, based on the work of 'economic
missions in the countries' and the reports they produced. These
economic reports and the overall country files j oined the ranks of the
Bank's most confidential documents, just a step below the Bank's
internal memoranda. In some cases, even government ministers of
the country concerned could not examine these major plans. In the
poorest and smallest countries, such secrecy was seen as proof that
their economic fate had been taken over by international trustees.