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Chad angry at World Bank over oil

by Open-Publishing - Sunday 1 January 2006
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Trade-Exchange Rates Governments Energy Africa

Chad has reacted angrily to warnings from the World Bank, after its parliament voted to relax controls on the use of its oil revenues.

The government has accused the World Bank of acting like a coloniser.

The body lent Chad more than $39m (£23m) to build a pipeline with an estimated total cost of almost $4bn.

It was on condition that Chad’s churches, trade unions and non-governmental organisations monitored how oil revenues were spent.

This was meant to guaranteed that oil money was used to help reduce poverty in Chad but the new laws would give Chad more control over the money.

’Guinea pigs’

The bank has warned if Chad breaks its agreement, that is a breach of contract. Further funds will be halted, and repayment rates on the current loan increased.

World Bank President Paul Wolfowitz said the law was a deciding factor in the bank’s financial support for the massive pipeline project in 1999.

But the government has accused the bank of treating Chadians like guinea pigs on which to experiment with different types of management.

It wants to use $36m of revenues held in a fund that is meant to tackle poverty to deal instead with the country’s financial problems.

The changes agreed by Chad’s parliament on Thursday still need to be ratified by President Idriss Deby.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/business/4570672.stm

Forum posts

  • I should think that this would be a good lesson for Muslim countries to stay away from the the White-man and the White-man’s instutions at all costs... But, alas, they have shown themselves to be blind and stuipd in the past...

    For a paltry $39 million on a $4 billion project they gave up their sovrein rights by having the World Bank wants of having, "churches, unions and NGO’s", oversee/monitor how the state’s revenues were spent.

    Wow. How fanstistically gutless of Chad to agree to this in the loan contract.