afrol News, 3 September - The World Bank has denied imposing inimical policies on governments of poor countries as conditions for giving them aid.

The vice president of the Breton Woods institution has tasked African journalists from more than 20 countries to shift their attention to the policy choices of their governments instead of suspecting the bank and other donors of imposing inimical policies.

"It is not our practice at the World Bank to impose policies in countries and we have never done that," Ms. Obiageli Ezekwesili, Ms. Ezekwesili who is in Ghana to attend the Third High Level Forum on Aid Effectiveness, told journalists, disclosing that last year alone, her bank gave out $5.4 billion as aid to poor countries, and has earmarked to deliver $7.2 billion by the close of this year. None of this money, she said, came with inimical policy impositions.

"It has always been the policy of the World Bank to support the development programmes of the governments of the countries it supports to ensure that those governments are in the driving seat as required by the March 2005 Paris Declaration on Aid Effectiveness."

She said the African media would fail their citizens should they continue to supply the public with wrong information that donor nations and multilateral organistions were held responsible for the contient's economic wores. Rather, the official said the blame lies on the policy choices of African governments.

Ezekwesili advised the African media to be more analytical in their approach to monitoring the factors that determine the level of development in their countries and ask why so much money has been invested in education and health for instance, yet these sectors have not delivered the desired results.

She said the bank's role has to do with offering assistance in technical and human capacity in the proper management and application of donor funds to ensure that those funds reduce poverty, increase growth, build capacity and ensure speedy achievement of the Millennium Development Goals.

Ms Ezekwesili said the World Bank's only goal is to ensure that poverty is reduced in less developed countries.

"Beside giving money to poor countries we have also championed lots of reforms that have improved the lot of the greater majority of the citizens of poor countries," she said. "For instance we championed reforms in the telecommunications industries in most African countries and today a lot of African citizens are on the GSM mobile phone networks, which was very rare about five years ago."

She said blamed Africa's major capacity and infrastructural gap for making the continent less competitive.

"Africa needs $22 billion to bridge the infrastructural gap and additional 18 billion US dollars to maintain the needed infrastructure."

She exhorted the media and civil society to hold governments accountable on proper application of natural resources rather than donor funds to bridge the huge infrastructure and capacity gap needed to make them competitive in the global market place.

The official said due to gap in human capacity, the continent has been witnessing a growth rate of 5.4% over the past decade. Ms Ezekwesili said Ghana, Burkina Faso and Uganda are among the few African countries that will halve poverty by 2015.

By staff writer

© afrol News

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