Giant_and_Dwarf-FIN

From Diagnosing the Problems to Remediationbroken by corrupt or incompetent officials rather than causing themselves complicationsin terms of their own lives. Among a portion of World Bank staff, working at an institutionwith the mission “To fight poverty with passion and professionalism for lasting results”, 141the institution’s motto was cynically transformed into: “The fight against poverty beginsat home”. I worked at the headquarters of the World Bank for more than 5 years and metwith dozens of truly dedicated and driven professionals, which is why it would be remissif I failed to mention that those who used this phrase were in the minority. The statementsimply captures the frustration with the institution’s own internal mechanisms.Conditionality is full of holes and has yet another problematic aspect: it allows thegovernments of the recipient countries to shift responsibility for problems onto the donors.This is also not a foreign concept to readers who hail from Central Europe, simply rememberthat the “European Union is at fault” for all of our problems. A foreign reader of variousCzech newspapers would find it easy to believe that the brutal EU had occupied theCzech Republic with columns of tanks, crushed the freedom of its residents and severelyrepressed the country. Conditionality and institutions such as the World Bank have alsobeen made out to be evil in the eyes of a portion of the world’s public, despite the fact thatthe numbers are clear: the World Bank is today the largest donor in the world in terms ofhealth, support for education and the equal rights of women.But, just like the investors who didn’t know that Idi Amin had long since left Uganda,many of the critics of the World Bank failed to notice the radical changes the bank and itspolicies underwent in the 1990s. These changes were so radical that developing countriesnow have the ability to borrow from others, such as China, and not just from the bank,and they seem happy to do it, as the Chinese do not require any pesky assessments ofenvironmental impact or the impact on the native population and won’t complicate thelives of local politicians with public tender for contractors. For the MICs that are able toborrow from the financial markets, the World Bank is not nearly as interesting as it oncewas, in part due to its complex and strict rules. The markets are not interested in anythingother than the returns on the loans. No one is going to ask about the environmental orsocial consequences of such loans. This, of course, complicates things for the World Bank,as important measures of its performance are the number and volume of loans it makes ina year. It is these loans for MICs which are the best in terms of risk as they are much moresecure loans than those provided to a Congo destroyed by war, the hungry dictatorship inEthiopia or a drought-crippled and landlocked country in the Sahel.Despite all of these limits, a donor country can exert pressure by using conditionalityand this is important pressure on poor countries as it cultivates, often at a snail’s pace,an environment that moves the decisive power in the country from the governmenttowards the people. Another parallel can be found in the roundly criticized aid from theEuropean Union; yes it is highly likely that 20 to 30 per cent and even more of public funds,141 For more, see http://web.worldbank.org/WBSITE/EXTERNAL/WBI/0,,contentMDK:20212623~menuPK:575902~pagePK:209023~piPK:207535~theSitePK:213799~isCURL:Y,00.html.155