Southern States - Andhra Pradesh   

Move for World Bank loan questioned

By Our Special Correspondent

The Congress leader, Y. S. Rajasekhara Reddy, having a word with M. Omkar of the Marxist Communist Party of India at a meeting in Hyderabad on Saturday. At left is B. V. Raghavulu of the Communist Party of India (Marxist).

HYDERABAD Dec. 6. Leaders of six Left parties, the Congress and the Telangana Rashtra Samiti questioned the legitimacy of the caretaker Government's move to enter into an agreement with the World Bank for utilising a further loan of Rs.1,100 crores under the structural readjustment programme and decided to seek the Governor, Surjit Singh Barnala's intervention in this regard.

Summing up on behalf of all the parties at the end of a seminar on "World Bank accords: Consequences and Dangers" here, the CPI(M)'s State secretary, B V Raghavulu, said on Saturday that the caretaker Government had no right to enter into any agreement with the World Bank . He declared that the Left parties would meet the Governor and seek his intervention to prevail upon the Government not to sign any agreement. He requested other parties also to meet Mr.Barnala in this regard. Earlier Mr.Raghavulu, Y.S. Rajashekhara Reddy (Congress), Aziz Pasha (CPI), M. Omkar (MCPI), N.Narasimha Reddy (TRS), representatives of CPI(ML) New Democracy, CPI (ML) and SUCI accused the Chandrababu Naidu regime of implementing various conditionalities imposed by the World Bank while taking loans to the tune of 1140 million US dollars since 1996 under the structural readjustment programme.

They said that many countries which availed themselves of World Bank loans suffered disastrous consequences. Mr. Raghavulu said while many States utilised loans from the World Bank, the ones obtained by Andhra Pradesh administration were not projects-related but "policy-related".

Accusing the Chief Minister of acting as CEO of the World Bank, he asked Mr.Naidu to seek mandate in the coming Assembly elections on the conditionalities imposed by the World Bank.

Mr.Rajashekhara Reddy said that Mr.Naidu was planning to enter the agreement with the World Bank for a further loan with a view to deceiving the people in view of elections.

He declared that the Congress, if returned to power, would provide free power to farmers even if the World Bank did not agree with it.

He asserted that the Congress on the other hand would impose its own conditions and would not function like a World Bank employee.

Mr.Vijay Kumar of the CPI-ML, Govardhan (CPI-ML New Democracy) and Murahari of SUCI also spoke.

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