Word: projects
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: during 1950-1959
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
Magic Lamp. The dam, a dramatic project that will irrigate 2,000,000 acres of desert, is estimated to cost $1.3 billion over a period of ten years. The U.S. has offered to grant $56 million outright and Britain another $14 million, for a start. Further grants have been promised, but cannot be guaranteed because the U.S. cannot commit Congress more than a year in advance. A major chunk is to come in the form of $200 million loans from the World Bank. Though most of the details of financing were settled months ago, there have been mysterious delays, which...
Later this week Banker Black comes to the most crucial part of his trip: Egypt. The most important single development project in the world today is the proposed high dam spanning the Nile at Aswan. The 15-year, $1.3 billion project will have 1,440,000 kw. of power capacity and increase Egypt's electric supply eightfold. Several months ago Black worked out a deal to lend Egypt $200 million to help get the project started, with the U.S. and Great Britain adding grants of $70 million. The only thing to be settled was the question of water rights...
...each project, teams of World Bank experts checked the plan to make sure it was workable. Black also found it increasingly valuable to take a look at the overall economy of a prospective borrower, gradually put the bank into the business of broad development planning. In 1949 the government of Colombia asked the bank for a team of experts to help work out a countrywide development program. A dozen specialists spent the better part of a year studying Colombia's basic problems, turned in a volume that became Colombia's charter for development, advising on how to attract...
Actually, says Black, "trained people are needed more than money in underdeveloped countries." To supply the need, the bank currently runs a year-long course for junior-rank career officials, training them in such subjects as balance of payments, national-income accounting, project preparation, etc. Black has also set up a school for senior governmental officials. Among his students last week: Colombia's national-planning director, the financial adviser of Pakistan, the economic director for Egypt's finance ministry...
Conditions & Creditors. With all its fine-tooth preparation, the World Bank purposely takes a long time to negotiate a project, and follows it through to the final rivet. "We are accused of imposing a lot of conditions," says Black. "That is absolutely true. We are proud of it." In Thailand, for example, the bank agreed to finance modernization of the government-owned railway system only on condition that it be set up as an autonomous agency, free from any government interference...