Banco Mundial

Se hace necesario leer sobre la eleccion del presidente del worldbank…Ademas de el tirador de luces que implico el decir que podia ser Bono el cantante de U2. Porque decide la suerte de muchos promgramas de Paises en “desenrollo”. Aporte de Beatriz Bustos

From http://news.ft.com/cms/s/08036fc8-9b05-11d9-90f9-00000e2511c8.html

It is time to free the World Bank
>By Jeffrey Sachs
>Published: March 22 2005 20:03 | Last updated: March 22 2005 20:03
>>

Democracy begins at home. If the World Bank is to be a leading force in
the promotion of good governance in developing countries, its own
governance must move beyond backroom politics. The bank is now choosing
a president. The first steps of this process have been unsatisfactory,
based on the idea that the US can choose the president without
competition and with no questions asked. Before the bank is further
damaged, there is an urgent need to make amends.

In spite of the World Bank being a multilateral institution of 184
member governments, its presidency is widely assumed to be owned by the
White House. Europe seems happy to play along, presumably to ensure its
own “ownership” of other international posts. The 150-plus developing
countries are relegated to the back benches.

The White House’s perceived lock on the World Bank presidency is
unsatisfactory for three reasons. First, the US has only 16 per cent of
the bank’s votes and other countries play an ever-larger role in its
operations. Behind the scenes, the US has been the biggest brake on
increasing the bank’s finance for poor countries, and has pushed for
debt relief in ways that would weaken bank finances. The US demands to
run the bank but on the cheap.

Second, the US government stands aloof from the global consensus on
economic development. The world has rallied behind the United Nation’s
Millennium Development Goals, the shared global objectives for cutting
extreme poverty, disease and hunger. The US has signed the relevant
documents but has refused to champion the goals.

The most egregious US lapse lies in foreign assistance. The conservative
mantra in Washington is that the US supports the Monterrey consensus
(adopted in the March 2002 conference that George W. Bush attended),
rather than increased development assistance. The conservatives claim
that the consensus is about trade and the private sector, not aid. This
is wrong.

The Monterrey consensus signatories, including the US, agreed to urge
developed countries that have not done so “to make concrete efforts
towards the target of 0.7 per cent of gross national product as official
development assistance”. US aid stands at a mere 0.15 per cent of GNP,
the lowest ratio of any donor country, around $65bn per year short of
the Monterrey target. The US alone is responsible for half of the global
financing shortfall in achieving the Millennium Development Goals,
according to the recent report of the UN Millennium Project. Yet the
Bush administration has so far shown no concrete efforts towards 0.7 per
cent.

Third, the US has advanced an unlikely candidate for the World Bank
position – Paul Wolfowitz. Aside from all else that can be said of Mr
Wolfowitz, his positions on crucial issues of global development are
unknown. Mr Wolfowitz, after all, has spent a career on military matters
and diplomacy, not on development and finance.

Europe, in spite of deep concerns, seems likely to accede to the US
nomination. Developing countries, dependent on international aid, are
wary of speaking out. Yet, the bank’s legitimacy will be damaged by a
show of unlimited White House power over the appointment. Moreover, the
hard-won consensus represented by the Millennium Development Goals may
well be put at risk. For these reasons, serious due diligence by the
bank’s members and executive directors is needed.

Mr Wolfowitz and any other candidates put forward should be required to
clarify their positions on at least four central issues of global
development. This is especially the case given US “exceptionalism” on
these issues.

First, does the candidate support the Millennium Development Goals?
Would the president make these goals the operational targets of bank
programmes? Second, does the candidate endorse the target of 0.7 per
cent of GNP in official development assistance from all donor countries?
Would the new bank president press the US and other donors to increase
aid to 0.7 per cent by 2015, as advocated by world leaders and the
report on UN reform by Kofi Annan, the secretary-general. Third, would
the candidate champion the call of free-market ideologues to privatise
public health, educationand infrastructure, or would he or she agree
that increased public finance is vital to ensuring universal access to
health, nutrition, water and sanitation, schoolingand family planning?

Fourth, does the candidate support a bigger voice and vote for
developing countries in the World Bank and International Monetary Fund,
as is widely urged? This question is highly pertinent today, as poor
countries are being told once again to swallow hard on any appointment
that comes down from Washington. Is the World Bank to be truly a bank
for the world, or simply the “American Bank”, as one Washington
commentator put it last week?
>
>The writer, director of the Earth Institute at Columbia University and
the UN Millennium Project, is author of The End of Poverty (Penguin
Press)