World Bank puts preconditions for aid to Nepal

World Bank officials have put preconditions for Nepal to follow in order to be eligible for getting the Bank’s aid and loans.

Sources based in Washington said that the officials explicitly told Nepal’s Finance Minister Dr. Baburam Bhattarai, who is in Washington DC now participating in the Bank’s meeting, to promise rapid privatization of schools, colleges, universities, hospitals, drinking water supply, electricity and telephone services.

Similarly, the World Bank is learnt to have hinted that a nation asking for grants and loans cannot choose its own international contractors and consultancies by ignoring World Bank preferences and priority sectors.

In previous decades, the World Bank representative in Nepal used to directly call Nepal’s cabinet ministers and instruct them to increase commodity prices before loans were approved.

Nepal is a country ruled by deep-rooted corruption, ill-governance and psychological slavery, keeping people still far behind.

Decade-long Maoist insurgency was founded on such deep-rooted issues. After the 10-April Constituent Assembly election as an integral part of the ongoing peace process, people are hopeful of better changes.

However, the Nepalis have become extremely frustrated because of the survival-of-the-fittest type of democracy prevalent in the country.

So far, state mechanisms in Nepal have not proved their existence as far as the responsibility of implementing the law of essential goods and services and taking actions against those violating the law are concerned.

All business forces, small or big, increase prices almost every day upon their individual will. Anarchy in market prices controlled by blackmarket with political nexus has become an apparent slow killer of working class people's lives.

first published in www.groundreport.com/mohannepali