November 04, 2005

China does not take away anything in the World Bank from sub-Saharan Africa

Sir, Desmond Lachman, November 3, asks for the World Bank to withdraw from lending the majority of its resources to a handful of middle-income countries, e.g. China, instead than to the really poor, like those in sub-Saharan Africa. It all sounds very reasonable but perhaps he should ask himself whether his proposed change of strategy would result in more effective assistance to the very poor. Indeed, it could mean less. As is, China and Mexico and other middle income countries do not take away anything from the World Bank and on the contrary they provide the volume of operations that allows the bank to keep in place an impressive cadre of development professionals, able to generate that type of technical assistance capability that as he correctly implies should perhaps also benefit the victims of the Hurricane Katrina. Finally since in calling for his reforms Lachman argues that this would result in more “bang for its taxpayers’ buck”, it might be timely to remind him that in reality there is unfortunately an immense lack of taxpayers’ bucks going for development.