The IMF and World Bank have become the private piggy bank of the Ukraine war.
Ukraine will receive a $1.5 billion loan from the World Bank, guaranteed by the government of Japan, Ukrainian Prime Minister Denys Shmyhal said on July 20. The World Bank and its partners have mobilized $34 billion to help Ukraine, of which more than $22 billion has already been received, Shmyhal said, Reuters reported on July 20.
On March 31, the IMF Executive Board approved a $15.6 billion loan to Ukraine, bringing the combined IMF-World Bank total to $49.6 billion (assuming the amounts are accounted separately, as it appears).
This, while the IMF is presently imposing genocidal conditionalities upon Argentina, before it dispenses a tranche of a loan, and also while the IMF and World Bank deny Africa and other parts of the world meaningful development credit.
But it gets worse: A July 19 RT article, “Europe’s Black Hole: How Much of the More Than $185 Billion Given by the West to Ukraine Has Been Stolen?” reports that “Kiev had already received a total of €165 billion ($185.6 billion) from Western countries.” Assuming that figure is accurate, and represents monies and munitions to Ukraine by individual Western countries, and not multilateral lending institutions like the IMF and World Bank, then Ukraine has or will receive $235.2 billion. (https://www.rt.com/russia/579897-europes-black-hole-ukraine/)
What could that $235.2 billion do otherwise? Based on Russia’s Rosatom’s contract to build 4.8 GW of installed nuclear capacity at the El Dabaa site in Egypt for $30 billion, a standard 1.2 GW light water nuclear reactor plant can be installed and set into operation for $7.5 billion. Therefore, this $235.2 billion could install and set into operation thirty-two 1.2 GW nuclear power plants. Those nuclear plants in 32 African nations, paired with building modern health and hospital, water management, and transportation systems, could have as great an impact on increasing the potential relative population density and anti-entropic growth of Africa as a whole, and thus simultaneously world growth as a whole, as perhaps any single investment.
