The details here are terribly important. Who gains? Who pays? At what rate? In what currency are loans (for local labour/materials) denominated? Why are infrastructure-services cross subsidies (standard fare in industrialised countries) prohibited? Why are private French/British/etc companies being brought in to build, own, operate? Why can they expect to get a 30+% US dollar rate of return on investment? What level of corruption can we expect? Why are ecological and gender externalities virtually never factored in to infrastructure project CBAs?
> and in quite a few cases,
> support for maintaining social safety nets.
Why US dollar-denominated loans for education or welfare services? What's the real rate of interest when the currency collapses (including on allegedly cheap IDA loans)? What damage is being done to the internal integrity and linkages of an economy, including food production, when exports become a crucial objective to repay the WB social safety-net loans? What conditions are attached (like a five-fold increase in public health clinic cost recovery in Mozambique demanded by Wolfy in mid-1998 in exchange for a pittance of debt relief)? Why are NGOs and `civil society' groups perverted and/or demobilised in the process?
Why are these kinds of questions not even hinted at, much less answered, on the WB website?
> It does not
> all look so bad to me.
I wish I could take you around some slums in Mozambique or Zimbabwe, comrade. It looks kind of different, once you notice WB staff footprints just ahead.