Chandrababu Naidu

HYDERABAD: Telugu Desam president N. Chandrababu Naidu on Tuesday charged the Government with doing a volte-face on World Bank loans and wanted it to make public the terms and conditions on which it was accepting them.

Addressing a press conference, Mr. Naidu said the Congress Government owed an explanation to the people, as the party was lapping up all the Bank loans after exploiting the issue politically and running a misleading campaign against the previous Telugu Desam Party Government.

"The Government should clarify under what conditions it is accepting the loans having made it a big issue earlier. It should explain the difference in loan conditions now," he said.

There was no bank in the world that gave loans without conditions, he added.

Reducing poverty

Mr. Naidu recalled how he had been asking the then Opposition and Left parties for an alternative to World Bank funding but he could not get a convincing response from them.

The then Telugu Desam Government had used the loans for reducing rural and urban poverty. "Was it wrong?" he wanted to know.

He said a high-level committee constituted by the party was studying economic reforms in the context of the criticism that the rich became richer and the poor, poorer.

The committee was looking at alternative economic policies and the basket of funding available to the Government. It would meet all leaders of like-minded parties.

`Reforms helped'

The TDP president said it was not as if reforms had not helped. The best example was the power sector. It was because of the reforms undertaken by the previous Government that the State was in a sound position. But the present Government had messed it up.

Poor power supply

Despite good rainfall and filling of reservoirs, it was unable to ensure quality power supply to the farm sector.

On the Left party's stand on World Bank loans, he said every political party had its own policy.

Nevertheless the Telugu Desam Party was prepared to launch joint struggles with them.

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