One for our side
Flying out this week with the British team went Sir William Ryrie, head of the Overseas Development Administration — in effect, the aid ministry under the wing of the Foreign Office. When a week hence the tumult and the burbling dies, the ministers and bankers depart, Sir William will wave them goodbye for another year. He is staying on to run the International Finance Corporation — which may now become the most significant job in the whole Fund and Bank conglomeration. The IFC is a World Bank affiliate which specialises in working with the private sector, and backs its judgments with equity stakes as well as loans. It has been a theme of successive Chancellors, and it becomes plainer by the minute, that bank lending to developing countries is near or at its limit — both for the countries and for the banks. The need now is for new forms of private capital investment to help the debtor coun- tries refinance themselves and reduce their dependence on bank loans. IFC is now doubling its capital, in time to show the way. Britain, until this year the second largest shareholder in the Fund and Bank, has never had its share of the jobs that matter. It is a good moment to put that right.
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