FOREIGN TRADE: Bitter Cherry

To pay for bulldozers and diesel-engined tractors it expected to buy in the U.S. and Canada, Great Britain’s Colonial Development Corp. last fall asked the World Bank for a $5,000,000 loan. C.D.C. officials, who considered that sum merely “the first bite of the cherry,” indicated they might later ask the World Bank for as much as $100 million.

Last week C.D.C. got a rude shock. The World Bank wanted to know1) how and with whom C.D.C. would spend the $5,000,000 and 2) what were the Colonial projects on which it would use the machinery. Though such full disclosure is a standard requirement for World Bank loans, C.D.C. Chairman Lord Trefgarne thought the requirement “too onerous,” forthwith canceled the request for the loan. Said World Bank Chairman Eugene Black: “I think it is perfectly reasonable to request that, when we lend money to buy machinery, we get to see what they are going to do with it.”