RES: Tariq Ali on Porto Alegre

Dennis Robert Redmond dredmond at efn.org
Tue Feb 20 15:52:08 PST 2001


On Mon, 19 Feb 2001, JC Helary wrote:


> well, i checked the url you gave, esp the press releases for the last 3-4
> years and all I could see had not much to do with supporting
> social/environmental regulations. mostly loans to build highways, gsm
> networks etc, and i was not impressed by the figures. about 400m euro in 3
> years ??? thast's nowhere close to the figure you mention. do you have
> anything more convincing ?

Those are just the press releases. The EIB also does a fair amount of public-private borrowing, i.e. low-interest loans on the books of the Eurobanks. Eurostat estimates this spending is around 1.5% of Eastern European GDP, which may seem small, but it's a big chunk of capital spending and investment.

Is it enough? No, more could be done. But it's light-years away from the neoliberal screw-job on Mexico. The Euroleft ought to be pushing for a vastly enlarged EIB, and big investments in health care and education.

-- Dennis



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