Asian Energy Advisors

Despite the wonky title, Invisible Hands - Tracing the Connections Between the Policies of International Financial Institutions and Country Budget Policies is a report that is easily readable by the general public - and should be. It’s a new conference report just made available this week at the The International Budget Project.

As Jim Schultz says, it’s about “how global institutions affect country budgets and how citizens can make a difference.”

Here’s one excerpt:

“Technical assistance” is another vehicle used by IFIs (international finance institutions, like ADB, WB, USAID) to exert a certain degree of influence over country policies through the provision of short- and long-term expertise and advice within government offices… IFIs provide technical assistance through their own staff and also through outside consultants (emphasis mine) to work along side government officials on a wide variety of projects.

… it is also through this technical assistance that IFIs are able to infuse their own philosophies and thinking into a nation’s economic and public policy. Some of that influence may be simply the power of argument, but there is also a subtle coercive pressure at work as well. It is clearly not lost on governments that the consultant from the World Bank offering advice on a project is going to be much friendlier in his or her reporting to the Bank if the government follows the advisor’s counsel than if the government does not.

Furthermore, speaking from experience, I can promise you that being a Project Manager of a large IFI project, in which one can easily have well over $100,000 in receivables from the IFI at any one time, makes it extremely hard to remain independent in submitting your final work, even if one wished to.

I chose to limit those risks to being forthright in my advisory. So I avoid engagements where I have exposure to significant levels of receivables. I think it’s unprofessional. Don’t you?