Accra, Sept. 1, GNA - Contrary to the widely spread notion that
the Breton Woods Institutions impose inimical policies on
governments of poor countries as conditions for giving them aid,
the World Bank (WB), on Monday denied ever imposing any
policies on poor countries. Ms. Obiageli Ezekwesili, WB Vice President for Africa, asked
African journalists from about 20 African countries during a video
press conference to turn their attention to the policy choices of their
governments instead of suspecting the WB and other donors of
inimical policy impositions. "It is not our practice at the World Bank to impose policies in
countries and we have never done that," she said. She noted that last year alone the WB gave out 5.4 billion US
dollars as aid to poor countries and had earmarked to deliver 7.2
billions US by the close of this year, adding that none of this money
came with inimical policy impositions. "It has always been the policy of the WB 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. Ms Ezekwesili said the media in Africa would be failing their
citizens if they continued to feed the public with the wrong
information that donor nations and multilateral organisations were to
blame for the woes of Africa, when in fact the blame should be put
at the doorstep of the policy choices of their governments. "The African media needs to be more analytical in their
approach to monitoring the factors that determine the level of
development in their countries and ask questions like why so much
money has been invested in education and health for instance and
yet those sectors have not been able to deliver the desired results,"
she said. She said the WB only offered assistance in the areas of technical
and human capacity in the proper management and application of
donor funds to ensure that those funds went to reduce poverty,
increase growth, build capacity and ensure speedy achievement of
the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs). MORE TMA/REA
