Your Money or Your Life!

THE WORLD BANK AND THE THIRD WORLD DEBT CRISIS/131

published in the bulletin of the Belgian employers' federation. The
extract speaks for itself:

The advantages that Belgium, like all World Bank member

countries, acquires through its participation in the group's insti­

tutions can be measured by looking at the flowback. The flowback

is the relationship between, on the one hand, total spending by the

International Development Association (IDA) and the World Bank

on a country's companies based on contracts secured by these

companies and, on the other hand, this country's contribution to

the World Bank and IDA. As a result, the flowback is the relation­

ship between what companies obtain through the sale of

equipment and consulting services, and what Belgium contributes

to the World Bank and IDA. The flowback from the World Bank to

the industrialised countries is significant and continues to rise;

from late 1980 to late 1984, it has risen from seven to ten for all

industrialised countries taken together. Which means that for

every dollar put into the system, industrialised countries got back

seven in 1980 and 10.5 now. (FEB, 1986)

THE WAPENHANS REPORT ON THE WORLD BANK'S

FAILURES

Do the World Bank's loans at least produce satisfactory results? In
February 1992, the Bank's vice-president, Willi Wapenhans, carried
out a confidential study evaluating projects financed by the World
Bank-some 1,300 projects in 113 countries. The conclusions of the
study are shocking: 3 7.5 per cent of projects are evaluated as being
unsatisfactory upon conclusion (up from 15 per cent in 1981), with
only 22 per cent of financial commitments seen to be in line with
Bank directives.

Yet the Profits keep Rolling In

The Wapenhans Report also reveals the contradiction between the
World Bank as a financial institution and the World Bank as the
development agency it is supposed to be. The Bank seeks to conceal
the way it benefits from the transfer of resources from the South into
its coffers (SI 7 billion in 1992) by loaning out even more, thereby
increasing the debt burden still further (Ferie, 1994).