No more World Bank conditionality - Country Director

Mr. Mats Karlson, World Bank Country Director, on Monday admitted that unequal relationships and marginalisation existed between the Bank and developing countries, which must be changed.

"Yes, it is true that unequal relationship exists," he said.

"Developing countries are living in unequal relationship and it is very difficult for them to make choices and I agree that there are a lot of World Bank issues that need to be looked at," he added.

Mr Karlson said this in reaction to a number of issues participants at a day's consultative discussion on World Bank assistance to Ghana's Poverty Reduction Strategy asked him on the bank's conditionalities for developing countries.

He said, "The World Bank may be powerful to a degree, but not all-powerful. The time of conditionalities is over and there should be a paradigm shift".

Some of the questions included, "Is the World Bank here to teach Ghana how to fish or to provide us with fish?" "Why are you asking us not to give subsidies to our farmers, but you allow others in Europe and America to provide subsidies to their sectors?"

The discussion, which cantered on the Country Assistance Strategy (CAS), was organized by Institute of Economic Affairs (IEA) in Accra for civil society organisations such as trade unions, religious organisations, and NGOs.

Its primary objective was to enable the Word Bank to solicit the view of civil society organisations regarding the most effective way the bank could support Ghana's Poverty Reduction Strategy (GPRS).

Reacting to the issue on subsidy, Mr Karlson said the point was not that the World Bank and its allies were discouraging developing countries.

Rather they were reactions to the implications in terms of their effect on the macro economic stability such as inflation and interest rates.

He said the problem facing the Third World was the lack of proper systems in place to develop this provision of subsidy.

"Even in the developed world, experience has shown that agriculture subsidy has not been a success. Subsidy is not the solution to the problems."

In his intervention, Mr Stephen Adei, Director of the Ghana Institute of Management and Public Administration (GIMPA), said the thrust of the discussion must be geared towards what the World Bank could do to help restore the trust that the average Ghanaian was losing in its government vis-?-vis its relationship with the Bank.

According to him the World Bank was also losing the trust of the Ghana government, which should have been the focus of the discussion.

He said national resource mobilization was key in the poverty reduction strategy if we wanted to develop.

"Ghana has the capacity of mobilizing twice what is currently being generated because every Ghanaian knows that he is not paying half of what he is supposed to pay as tax," he said.

Mr Kenneth Quartey of Ghana National Association of Poultry Farmers said there was the need for the Bank to review and reverse its policies in order to regain the trust from developing countries.

"If you say subsidies are detrimental to our development, then you must speak about it in total; tell the development countries (the same)," he said.