The Economist's Tale: A Consultant Encounters Hunger and the World Bank available in Paperback
The Economist's Tale: A Consultant Encounters Hunger and the World Bank
- ISBN-10:
- 184277185X
- ISBN-13:
- 9781842771853
- Pub. Date:
- 05/01/2003
- Publisher:
- Bloomsbury Academic
- ISBN-10:
- 184277185X
- ISBN-13:
- 9781842771853
- Pub. Date:
- 05/01/2003
- Publisher:
- Bloomsbury Academic
The Economist's Tale: A Consultant Encounters Hunger and the World Bank
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Overview
What really happens when the World Bank imposes its policies on a country? This is an insider's view of one aid-made crisis. Peter Griffiths was at the interface between government and the Bank.
In this ruthlessly honest, day by day account of a mission he undertook in Sierra Leone, he uses his diary to tell the story of how the World Bank, obsessed with the free market, imposed a secret agreement on the government, banning all government food imports or subsidies. The collapsing economy meant that the private sector would not import. Famine loomed. No ministry, no state marketing organization, no aid organization could reverse the agreement. It had to be a top-level government decision, whether Sierra Leone could afford to annoy minor World Bank officials. This is a rare and important portrait of the aid world which insiders will recognize, but of which the general public seldom get a glimpse.
Product Details
| ISBN-13: | 9781842771853 |
|---|---|
| Publisher: | Bloomsbury Academic |
| Publication date: | 05/01/2003 |
| Pages: | 272 |
| Product dimensions: | 5.50(w) x 8.50(h) x 0.60(d) |
About the Author
Peter Griffiths is an independent economist and consultant. This book is being published under a pseudonym since its subject matter relates to a mission which he undertook for the World Bank.
Peter Griffiths is an independent economist and consultant. This book is being published under a pseudonym since its subject matter relates to a mission which he undertook for the World Bank.
Read an Excerpt
The Economist's Tale
A Consultant Encounters Hunger and the World Bank
By Peter Griffiths
Zed Books Ltd
Copyright © 2003 Peter GriffithsAll rights reserved.
ISBN: 978-1-84277-185-3
CHAPTER 1
The Task Ahead
MONDAY, 4 SEPTEMBER
The White Man's Graveyard, they call it; the poorest place on God's earth. It looked like a tropical paradise this morning, as I ate a breakfast of pawpaw and mango on the terrace of a four-star hotel, and looked out over two miles of deserted beach. True, when the plane landed last night, we had gone through the most decrepit international airport I have ever seen, but it was too dark to see the city or the countryside on the way to the hotel, so I had not seen any of the signs of a country on its knees.
All I knew at breakfast time this morning was that my job here was to look at Sierra Leone's food situation. I had to do an economic analysis of the food policy, find out if there were any problems and come up with solutions. All by myself. All in four months. Today I was going to have to try to find out what my job really was. Of course, my tasks were set out in the written Terms of Reference in my contract, but these TOR are always a polite fiction. In fact, anybody who has anything to do with drawing them up has their own hidden agenda, whether it is increasing their personal power, firing the Managing Director, getting a large aid budget for the country, or diverting some of the aid into their personal bank accounts. Unless I can find out what these people really want, I will not be able to develop a solution that they will accept and implement.
As I was musing about my programme for the day, a wiry black man of about 35, dressed in a grey safari suit, came up to my table.
'Good morning, Sah,' he said cheerfully. 'I am Mohammed Kasama; I am the World Bank driver for you. I have come to take you to the office.'
We shook hands and I introduced myself. He said that he was going to be my driver for my whole four months here. I was delighted to hear it for several reasons. He is cheerful and speaks excellent English. More important, perhaps, he is a Muslim, and probably does not drink, which extends my life expectancy considerably. In Zambia, there was an appalling death rate because drivers drank heavily, then drove at high speed on excellent roads. A government Land-Rover had a life expectancy of 2,500 miles, and a police motorcycle of 600 miles – and their drivers about the same.
We drove two miles down the coast from the hotel, with the empty beach on one side and a golf course on the other. Then the road swung inland through rice paddies, and uphill into leafy suburbs. The car pulled up outside a 15-foot-high whitewashed wall, with the blue flag of the World Bank fluttering above it. Mohammed hooted, and a uniformed guard opened the high steel gates. We drove in and parked in the compound. I got out and went into the office building, where I asked if I could see the Resident Representative.
While I waited, I wondered what to expect. I was curious about the man who had set up this consultancy project and arranged the finance for it. The World Bank Resident Representative, its ambassador, is the most powerful foreigner in any poor country. A country like Sierra Leone would be getting perhaps three-quarters of its foreign exchange earnings from foreign aid, and three-quarters of its government budget too. The World Bank is the biggest aid donor, so it can exert a lot of power by increasing or reducing the amount of aid, or by switching it from one sector to another. It is not just its own aid: it orchestrates the aid programmes of most donor countries. The Bank uses this power to make the Government adopt right-minded policies. The Bank's local Res Rep has a big say in how the power is exercised.
He did not rise to his feet when I entered his office, but motioned for me to sit on one of the chairs in front of his desk. He seemed to be in his mid-forties, and was obviously French by his accent. When he introduced himself, I heard him to say 'Murat', like Napoleon's marshal, and he seemed to be modelling himself on the beau sabreur himself, with his dapper figure, his moustache, his swagger and his imperious manner. When I looked at his card, I saw it was the more prosaic 'Mauratte' but I had difficulty in seeing him as anything but an aspiring cavalry commander.
He began his briefing, 'You are here to get the Government to change its food policy and its food marketing. The present system is a disaster, and it is seriously damaging the economy.'
I tried not to look surprised, but my Terms of Reference had not suggested that the present system was a disaster, or that I would be doing more than a routine economic study. This was my first glimpse of the hidden agenda.
'The major problem is that there is a government monopoly on exports of the main crops, coffee and cocoa, and on the imports of the main food crop, rice. All of these have to be marketed through the Agricultural Marketing Board, which is a Government-owned company.'
I nodded to keep him talking, though he did not seem to need any encouragement.
'When the British Empire ran this country,' he continued, 'they established monopoly marketing boards to protect the farmers against traders who cheat them and give them low prices. They did it in England first, then in Africa and in places like Australia and New Zealand. We French did the same, especially in West Africa. Perhaps it was a good idea then, in the 1930s depression. Perhaps, but I do not think so. Today there is no question: they are a disaster, you understand. It is World Bank policy to get rid of them.'
I did understand. It was all familiar ground, as I had spent the last few years trying to reform, control or close down state marketing boards. All those that I have seen are corrupt or inefficient, with the result that farmers get almost nothing for their crops.
'The Agricultural Marketing Board originally dealt with export crops only,' he explained. 'It became powerful because it controlled much of the economy. I think the Colonial Government was happy with this because they did not trust the multinational trading companies or the Lebanese traders.'
'Lebanese?' I asked myself, startled. Then it clicked: I had wondered why there were so many Arabs at the airport last night – this is hardly the country to invest your petrodollars – but they must be the Lebanese who had settled in West Africa before the First World War. I had heard that they controlled trade here in the same way that Indians do in East Africa and Jews in South Africa.
But he was reaching his peroration. He rose from his chair and stood silhouetted against the window. He paused dramatically, then raised his hand to his moustache, twisting the end with a flourish. He declaimed, not addressing me at all, but speaking over my head to the wall behind me. Evidently it was a set speech, perhaps one he was rehearsing before giving it to a committee in Washington.
'The Agricultural Marketing Board is corrupt and inefficient. It is supposed to be a non-profit-making company exporting coffee and cocoa for the farmers. In effect, though, a percentage of everything they export goes to a private account in a bank in Switzerland.' He looked at me, and explained in a normal tone, 'The French and British brokers are helpful in arranging this, you know.'
'Yes,' I said, 'I do know.' Then I caught myself. I was believing his story because of what I had seen elsewhere in Africa, not because I had any evidence that it was happening here in Sierra Leone. I must be careful: certainly I must listen to everybody's opinions, but I must withhold judgement until I had checked the evidence.
He looked over my head again, and continued to declaim, 'Up to two years ago, there was another marketing board, the Rice Corporation. Its job was to make sure that the people in Freetown and those in the diamond fields got enough to eat. They used to buy the rice from the farmers, store it, mill it, and sell it to the people in the towns. For many years it worked well, you understand: farmers got a good price, and the people got enough food.
'Then about five years ago the farmers stopped producing enough rice to feed the country. They produced less and less, and now the country imports half its rice. The reason was, I think, that the Rice Corporation was corrupt and inefficient, so their costs were high, and they paid the farmers a price too low.'
I nodded. It was a common enough story in Africa.
'But,' he continued, 'the people still had to eat. So the Rice Corporation imported rice, and the Government subsidized the price. Again, it worked for some years. Then the economy got very bad, and the Central Bank could not supply the foreign exchange that the Rice Corporation needed to buy rice. There were some shortages, and food riots. The Government knew that the state-owned Agricultural Marketing Board had plenty of foreign exchange in London banks from their exports of coffee and cocoa. So it closed the Rice Corporation, and told the Agricultural Marketing Board to take over rice imports.'
'Right,' I said, just to keep him talking. It was an odd story: some bits like high operating costs and subsidies hung together, but other bits sounded strange. I would have liked to ask him some serious questions, but these would have stopped him in mid-flow, and I would not have found out what he thought was going on. I usually save my serious questions until the speaker has finished putting forward his view of the situation. Or I use a question to change the subject if he gets off track. In a perfect interview, I would control the direction by body language and a few 'Uh huh's, with no questions or other interjections at all.
'This worked,' said Murat. 'The Agricultural Marketing Board does today import enough rice. Prices for farmers here are still too low, because there is the subsidy on imports, you understand. So farmers do not grow much rice. Already I have said that the Agricultural Marketing Board is corrupt and inefficient, so it does not pay farmers to grow coffee or cocoa for export either.'
'This means that Sierra Leone imports much rice, and exports little coffee and cocoa, so the economy is bad today, and will be very bad tomorrow. That is evident.'
The story sounded only too familiar. The collapse of agriculture in one African country after another was for the same reasons. Still, I must not let myself believe him until I had checked his facts.
Then he stood up again, so he could look down at me, declaiming from on high. 'What you are here for is to close down the Agricultural Marketing Board. You are to persuade Government that it is the fundamental of their problem. They are to privatize and deregulate the market. They will then have a FREE MARKET [he said it in capitals] and the economy will start to work again. We, the World Bank, will support you absolutely.' He puffed out his chest, as though waiting for applause.
He looked at me again, and spoke in a normal voice, 'There used to be some other factors to do with the exchange rate, but they are not important now. I have the expert on that from our headquarters visiting Freetown now. I have arranged for him to see you at two o'clock tomorrow. His name is Jed Welensky.'
He paused while I wrote this down.
As soon as I had finished writing, he brought the interview to a close and showed me out of his office. I had not been given the time to ask my questions, so I would have to visit him again, or get the information from someone else.
It had been an odd meeting, partly because of his personality and partly for what he had said. There seemed to be a lot of common sense in his diagnosis of the problem, but I had got worried towards the end. It had looked more and more as though Murat thought that I was an employee of the Bank whom they had brought in to push World Bank policy. I am not. I am employed by the Sierra Leone Government, and specifically by the Ministry of Agriculture, so I owe my duty to them, not to the Bank. All the Bank did was to lend Sierra Leone the dollars to pay me, so they are not even a party to my contract. As for the suggestion that it is my job to push World Bank policy, it is an insult: even if I were employed directly by the Bank, I would produce honest, independent analysis and advice. I am certainly not going to fake my analysis when lives are at stake, as they are when I am working on food policy.
Careerwise, though, I cannot afford to upset the World Bank, as I get two-thirds of my income from doing consultancy from them. I will have to tread carefully.
CHAPTER 2Meeting the Minister
As I stepped out of the air-conditioned World Bank offices, I was struck in the face by hot, humid, air. It was now 9.30, and the day had started to warm up. It must already have been 80 degrees Fahrenheit, with 100 per cent humidity. More or less what I should have expected of a country bang on the equator at sea level, but it still came as a surprise.
Mohammed was dozing in the front seat of the car. He looked up and greeted me cheerfully, then jumped out of the car, and ran round to open the passenger door for me. Too late: I was already getting in.
He drove me to my next appointment at the Ministry of Agriculture. We left the new suburbs, and drove into the old residential district. The houses are wooden, with balconies. They were all painted lovingly once, but the paint is starting to come off, leaving bare wood, dark grey and weathered. Much of the paint that remains is covered with mould – the blue-black mould that grows everywhere with this heat and humidity. Surprisingly, these houses are attractive in a rundown way. There was no pretence at drains or a pavement, just wide ditches on each side of the potholed tarmac, and grassy verges.
We drove at a slow crawl through the traffic jams of the city. The traffic moves at a snail's pace because the streets are narrow, almost medievally narrow. How can this be in Africa? The cities of Central Africa were laid out on a grand scale by visionaries who could imagine that a piece of empty veld was going to be a great city someday. Their roads were laid out wide enough for an ox wagon pulled by sixteen oxen to do a U-turn – twice as wide as Regent Street. Here in Sierra Leone, the Colonial Office seems to have planned a village and to have been taken by surprise when it turned into a city.
Mohammed said that the congestion was because the city is built on the narrow plain between the mountain and the sea. Well, maybe, but that does not explain the narrow streets – not just narrow, but blocked. The buildings on each side of the street in the business area are mostly shops, with the owner's flat upstairs. There are hard earth or concrete pavements here. The shopkeepers seemed to have rented space on the pavement outside their shops to street traders, who set out their wares on packing cases, or on the ground. This means that nobody can walk along the pavement. Instead, they have to walk on the street, blocking the traffic. To make things worse, some of the more adventurous traders have extended their stalls into the street, making it narrower still. In fact it looks as though quite a few of the brick buildings have been added on to, so they extend into the street. The best way to deal with this encroachment is the Pakistani way: every year or two the army drives a tank where the road ought to be. This leaves quite a few buildings lacking a room or two.
At the city centre, I saw an ornate colonial High Court building and a few dozen newish buildings of four to six storeys. Evidently this is the business centre. Here the tarmac runs the full width of the road and there are concrete pavements – no bare earth here. Between the pavements and the road are open drains 18 inches wide and 4 feet deep. They must have very heavy rain.
Mohammed passed the time in the traffic jams by giving me my first lesson in Creole, the local lingua franca.
'Paddy, Kusheh O' (Hi friend – Paddy being Scouse for mate.)
'How de body?' (How are you?)
'I well, ow youself?' (I am fine. How are you?)
'O we go see back.' (See you later.) Once I clicked to the accent, it made sense. It is largely English words with a local grammar. Something to learn and practice. Not that I will ever learn enough to hold a real conversation in my four months here, but I will have to interview a lot of people using an interpreter. If I can get through the first two or three minutes of formal greetings, I can establish myself as a real person, and they will speak to me rather than to my interpreter.
Of course, as in nearly all Commonwealth countries, the official language is English, and education is in English. It is the uneducated urban poor that speak Creole, while the rural tribespeople speak their own languages as first language.
(Continues...)
Excerpted from The Economist's Tale by Peter Griffiths. Copyright © 2003 Peter Griffiths. Excerpted by permission of Zed Books Ltd.
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Table of Contents
Foreword: Is the story true? The task ahead Meeting the minister The expats Meeting the officials The Casablanca Exchange rates The United Nations Doing business in Freetown Finding the facts The Casablanca The weekend In the markets Vanishing rice Military coups Planning my expedition Alarm at the World Bank Into the interior Visiting the projects The resthouse More projects The university Trekking on Finding the facts The Southern province Colonialism Home again Financing the system What happened to the money? Freetown Getting information How civil servants survive Trickle down How much food is there? The World Bank reform Cash flow problems The Agricultural Marketing Board Of coups and rumours of coups How much rice is imported? Who will import? How do I get action? The Casablanca Cabinet paper Getting it to the decision makers Handing it over On trek again Mother Theresa Waiting for action The marketing board A sundowner Revisiting the importers A second Cabinet Paper Dishonest expatriates Alerting the World Food Programme Breaking the rules The showdown And then what? Glossary