Good morning everybody, and welcome
to the Oslo Conference on Conditionality.
On my way to the Ministry this
morning I passed a bookstore. In the window the store had posted
its slogan: “The real cure for boredom is curiosity. There is no
cure for curiosity”
I have been asked why Norway is
arranging this event, and what we hope to achieve by it. I think
the slogan is a good starting point: We want to find out what is
the status regarding the use of conditionality by the World Bank
and the IMF. And based on this status, we want to discuss the way
forward. So curiosity should be the slogan for this conference, as
it should be for everybody every day of every year.
We are very happy to see so many
institutions, NGO’s and governments represented here today. My
government is a firm believer in dialogue with all relevant
parties.
The Norwegian Government has stated
in its policy platform that it does not want to support projects or
programmes that
are conditional upon privatisation or liberalisation. This
is not to say that all programmes that include privatisation or
liberalisation are wrong. That is very different. We believe that
it is more appropriate to let borrowing countries make their own
policy choices. Moreover, as the World Bank pointed out in its 2005
Conditionality Review, strong conditionality without local
ownership and leadership has failed to produce lasting change.
If we look to the industrialized
world or to those countries that we admire for having succeeded in
creating economic growth, we will find that there is no fixed
pattern. Some countries have in the public sector what other
countries have in the private sector.
For me there is a great difference
between privatising a corruptly run air line and privatising
education or health, sectors that we in Norway tend to consider
natural public tasks. Again, the decisions must be taken by the
individual countries.
In some countries privatisation
might be a way out of problems related to corruption. In other
countries privatisation will be simply to transfer a large part of
the national fortune to the hands of private individuals.
Looking to small countries in
South-Asia, from which I have some experience, I’ve seen the World
Bank behave in very different ways. In Sri Lanka the World Bank was
outstanding. Hardly any other international organisation had the
same skills in conflict management or had developed the same level
of conflict sensitivity. The World Bank really understood the root
causes of the conflict in Sri Lanka and contributed to bring the
peace process forward.
Based on the experiences with the
World Bank in Sri Lanka, it was quite surprising to come to Nepal
just after the King had given back the power to the people of
Nepal. Please note that Nepal in May this year was like Norway was
in May 1945, after the Germans had capitulated. I’ve never been to
a country with such energy as Nepal this spring. It was an outburst
of freedom. People from all walks of life felt that this was their
hour. The local World Bank-office, however, was busy with the issue
of privatisation of printing houses for school books. Quite
frankly, I was shocked by the approach of the World Bank in these
circumstances.
Maybe this is just a question of
personalities. I do not know, but I think researchers should look
into the performance of the World Bank and the IMF across
countries.
Credit for inspiring this
Conference must go to our friends from Oxfam, who brought up the
idea of holding a conference on conditionality in Norway during
their visit to Oslo earlier this year.
The main reason for staging this
conference is that the IMF and the World Bank and the NGO community
give very different answers to the question of whether the
financial institutions still place undue pressure on governments to
privatise and/or liberalise their economies.
I have therefore asked my staff in
the Ministry to find out more about the realities on the ground,
and look forward to the presentation of the results of the
investigations here at the Conference later today.
Deng Xiao Ping transformed the
Chinese economy very much based on one slogan: “You should seek the
truth in the facts”. This should also be the basis for the debate
here.
Before I close, please note that
there is nothing wrong with conditionality as such. Any loan is
coming and has always come with some kind of conditionality. If
not, it is a gift. The basic conditions are there to ensure that
the loan is paid back. But that is of course very different from
establishing conditions based on ideological perceptions of what is
the right thing to do. This is what we are opposed to and what we
want to look into
I’ve said that this government
believes in dialogue. We also believe in openness. I think that all
problems are more easily resolved if they are put out in the open.
For too long too much have been done behind closed doors. The more
we can put it out in the open through debates in forums like this,
and in the society at large, the more likely we are to succeed. Let
this be the spirit of this conference; let us seek the truth in the
facts.
Thank you.
