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World Bank rules out role in Enron-MSEB tussle

World Bank president Jim Wolfensohn on Friday said that the Bank or any of its affiliates have no plans to interfere in the ongoing tussle between the US power major Enron Corporation and the Maharastra State Electricity Board over the pricing of power from the Dabhol power plant.

He was replying to a pointed query from newspersons on whether he saw any role for the World Bank in formulating the contract procedures for private sector power projects in developing countries in the light of the serious problems between India and the US power major.

Addressing the customary press conference on the eve of the spring meeting of the World Bank and IMF, Wolfensohn said he could see much more transparency in contracts as more and more power projects come up in the region and would prefer the markets themselves to correct the situation.

"It is correcting itself,'' he said, adding that he saw no role for the World Bank on this issue.

As many as 50 private companies have been blacklisted by the World Bank in developing countries for indulging in corrupt practices in projects involving its funds and several bank officers have been prosecuted as the institution no longer considered corruption as a political issue.

He said the World Bank has formulated a comprehensive action plan to deal with this problem and an ethics committee to provide guidelines for the World Bank officials in dealing with these issues, he added.

Wolfensohn said following the implementation of debt relief packages by the World Bank, debt servicing in 65 per cent of the developing countries has been brought down from 7 per cent to 2 per cent of their GDP.

But if the World Bank resorted to the extreme measure of writing off the entire debt of 63 developing countries, it will eat up its entire capital base of $29 billion and go bankrupt.

The choice is before the shareholders, he maintained.

He stressed the need for countries to provide better governance to tackle the problem of debt servicing and poverty instead of harping for more debt relief packages.

Replying to another question, he said the bank is giving priority to the programme to combat AIDS and a sum of $500 million have been earmarked for the purpose in various African countries.

Recently, it allocated a sum of $150 million for tackling the disease in Caribbean countries. A major programme is also on in India. He said the World Bank proposed to join the UN programme to create a joint global fund to tackle AIDS as well as malaria and tuberculosis.

Disputing the contention that the World Bank has not made a dent on tackling poverty, he said there has been several achievements in this regard.

About ten thousand skilled people are on the job in the World Bank dealing with this question. Eighty-five per cent of the strategic documents in dealing with this problem are now public and rest also will be made transparent during the course of time, he said, referring to the complaint that the World Bank's bureaucracy is secretive.

Wolfensohn said being an appointee of President Clinton did not mean he would resign from the post with the change of guard at the White House, and added that his appointment for a three-year period and that he would complete it.

He had excellent relations with the treasury officials of the Bush administration, he added.

UNI

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