VIJAYAWADA: The Working Group on International Financial Institutions (WGonIFIs) has welcomed the AIIB’s move to withdraw from the Amaravati funding commitment. The group has observed that never did the four-year-old AIIB dropped a project.
In a statement on Tuesday, the group said that the AIIB considered the project only as a co-financier and was to adhere to the World Bank’s safeguard policies. “World Bank funding to any project brings in other bilateral and multilateral financing agencies without each one of them independently doing due-diligence, as we have seen in the case of the Narmada dam project.
This nexus between financial institutions and mechanisms are strengthening, and only people united and scientific facts can make them bow down as we have seen in the case of Amaravati,” said social activist Medha Patkar, who had toured Amaravati and supported the farmers’ agitation against land procurement and alleged irregularities.
Meanwhile, countering TDP supremo N Chandrababu Naidu’s claims that the World Bank’s move would have an adverse impact, former chief secretary IYR Krishna Rao said the State lost in no way. In a series of tweets on Tuesday, the former CS explained that the World Bank’s assistance was not a grant. “It is a loan but not a grant. The State is in no way a loser as alternative projects can be substituted and the World Bank is one among many lenders it can choose from,” he noted.
He further defended the Centre’s decision to withdraw its request to the Washington-based lending agency. “There was no way Amaravati project could have been sanctioned without an enquiry as that was what the bank’s investigating team recommended. An enquiry would have brought out flagrant environmental violations and blatant undermining of interests of marginalised classes. The Centre did the right thing by calling off this project at this stage,” he observed.