130/YOUR MONEY OR YOUR LIFE!
loans from the international financial community. In its October
1982 report, the IMF said that recession would be avoided. In its
1984 reports, the IMF seconded the World Bank in calculating that
the ratio between debt servicing and export earnings would improve
for Latin America. In fact, the exact opposite occurred.
WRONG FORECASTS ON WORLD MARKET PRICES
The World Bank was ] ust as arbitrary and wrong in its forecasts of the
export revenues meant to rescue developing countries from debt. Its
1981 predictions for the price of African raw materials were out by
62 per cent for minerals and metals; by 156 per cent for oil; by 180
per cent for fats and food oils; by 103 per cent for beverages; by 60
per cent for lumber; and by 9 7 per cent for non-food agricultural
products (George and Sabelli, 1994). The Bank could have easily
foreseen that - with all countries of the South seeking to maximise
exports in order to meet debt obligations - the prices of the exported
products would drop.
In 1991, the Bank repeated the mistake. Its international economy
division continued to put out optimistic forecasts which, within two
years, were also revealed to be thoroughly groundless. Real market
prices were significantly lower than predicted: 47 per cent lower for
coffee; 56 per cent for cocoa; 74 per cent for sugar; 35 per cent for
rubber; and 52 per cent for lead, to name but a few.
The 1991 report persists in forecasting that raw material prices
would continue to rise during the 1990s, saying that the GNP of
developing countries would rise by 5 per cent annually between
1992 and 2002.
THE WORLD BANK AND THE DRAIN ON THE SOUTH'S
RESOURCES
World Bank leaders have calculated the return on funds deposited in
the Bank by industrialised countries as their participation in its
capital. The Bank's official publications say nothing about this, but
an idea of its profits is provided in specialised publications aimed at
the business community. The following is an extract from a speech
given to an audience of Belgian employers in 1986 by Jacques de
Groote, Belgium's executive director at the IMF and World Bank, and