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U.S. Lags in Payments to World Bank Fund Despite President Reagan's State of the Union pledge to strengthen the world economy, it now appears likely that the United States will be two years late in fulfilling its current $3.24 billion commitment to the World Bank's so-called soft-loan agency, the International Development Association.The money originally was supposed to be paid by fiscal 1983; the likelier date is now fiscal 1985. Fate of IMF Bill in Question As Debate Heats Up in House The House yesterday began heated debate on amendments to the controversial bill authorizing a substantial increase in U.S. funding for the International Monetary Fund, with passage of the legislation still in doubt.After three hours of debate underscoring dissension within both parties, the House defeated legislation that would have placed restrictions on the interest rates U.S. banks could charge on loans to Third World countries forced to restructure their debt and the length of payments. Fed to Hold Hearings on Citicorp Deals The Federal Reserve Board announced yesterday that it would hold hearings in early January on Citicorp's proposed acquisition of two savings and loan associations--one in Chicago, the other in Miami.The world's largest bank holding company, which already owns a large S&L in San Francisco, needs Federal Reserve approval to buy Biscayne Federal in Miami and First Federal in Chicago. BANK FEARS GROW OVER NATIONS' LOANS The world banking system is facing its greatest challenge in decades: to shore up the solvency of a group of borrowing nations that cannot repay their outstanding loans and need billions more just to keep their economies running. Ever since Aug. 20, when Mexico disclosed it could not meet its obligations, economic specialists such as those at the Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco have worried. Recent agreements by international lending and financial institutions: World Bank * A $302.3 million loan to Brazil for a water and sewer project to improve water supply and sewage disposal methods in urban areas.* A total of $21 million to Haiti for renovation and expansion of the market area in downtown Port-au-Prince.* A $101 million loan to Indonesia to assist in the resettlement of approximately 300,000 families from Java to less-crowded islands. Recent agreements by international lending and financial institutions: World Bank * A public offering of approximately $83 million worth of bonds in Japan to be made through a syndicate of securities firms headed by the Nikko Securities Co. Ltd. The bonds, which will have an annual yield of 8.07 percent, will be priced at 99.50 percent and will be redeemed at par.* A credit to Cape Verde to assist in a $31.7 million port project. Recent agreements by international lending and financial institutions: World Bank * A $15 million loan to Senegal to provide basic health care in rural areas.* A $20 million credit to Benin to assist in a rural development project.* A $19 million credit to Burma for the development of an irrigation project.* Two loans totaling $374 million to Brazil to help finance a development banking project and to construct, improve and rehabilitate 8,000 kilometers of feeder roads. Hemalata C. Dandekar is an architect with a Ph.D. in urban planning. She has designed houses for psychiatrists in Beverly Hills and evaluated shelters for homeless people in Calcutta. She has worked for UNESCO and the World Bank and taught at MIT and UCLA. She is crying now, as we sit in her office at the Bunting Institute in Radcliffe Yard. Six years ago, she spent a year studying an Indian village, listening to the women talk about the insides of their lives, often squatting with them. Enzo G. Giglioli, 59, the deputy chief of the East Asia and Pacific projects department of the World Bank, died of cancer Dec. 6 at George Washington University Hospital.Mr. Giglioli, who lived in McLean, was born in Georgetown, Guyana. He took a degree in agriculture at McGill University in Montreal and did postgraduate work at the Imperial College of Tropical Agriculture in Trinidad.He worked for the ministry of agriculture in Guyana and as general manager of the National Irrigation. For bank loan officers, 1982 was not a year to remember fondly. The weak worldwide economy depressed demand for loans by businesses and consumers and inflated the number of companies and countries that could not pay their debts.The world's economic woes are reflected in the pages of the annual reports to shareholders just issued by Philadelphia's major commercial banks and their merger partners elsewhere in the state. Some of the brochures imply that it is the end of the world. I thought as I drove there that it was.I was headed toward Ocracoke, an island on the Outer Banks of North Carolina that houses a village of the same name. Ocracoke is the southernmost of the inhabited Outer Banks Islands, hardly 20 miles long, hanging like a disconnected finger below a spit of land on which towns such as Nags Head rise on wooden stilts to challenge the sea, and below the island of Hatteras. The House began debate yesterday on an $8.4 billion increase in U.S. pledges to the International Monetary Fund (IMF), viewed as protection from world economic depression by supporters and as a "bailout" for big banks by critics.Secretary of State George P. Shultz and all living former secretaries of state, including Henry A. Kissinger, sent a letter to House Speaker Thomas P. O'Neill Jr. and House GOP leader Robert H. Michel urging support. While vacationers throng the dunes and breakers of nearby Kitty Hawk and Nags Head south of here this summer, homeowners, developers, environmentalists and legislators from two states are locked in a complex struggle for this tiny Outer Banks village, a hamlet so small it doesn't even have a public road.The struggle is uniquely appropriate to this remote shore, a world of wind-whipped beauty and thundering surf and a history studded with pirates and plunderers and eccentric. Mail for Dr. Dale Gibson, former president of South Oklahoma City Junior College, will have to be forwarded to Amman, Jordan, after March 14.Gibson, 49, is going to that Middle East country under the aegis of Oklahoma State University, the World Bank and the United Nations, to help reorganize the higher educational system. Federal Reserve Board Chairman Paul A. Volcker today took strong exception to a forthcoming report by the House Banking Committee that criticizes the Fed's secrecy in conducting monetary policy.Speaking to the first meeting of the newly formed National Council of Savings Institutions, Volcker said, "You won't get better policy by conducting monetary policy in a goldfish bowl. President Reagan delivered a well-deserved kick to Congress yesterday for its recalcitrance in strengthening the International Monetary Fund. Here's one issue that's pretty simple: the president is right and Congress is wrong. Congress, and particularly the House, has allowed itself to be intimidated by a cuckoo alliance of the least reliable elements of right and left, united in a dim populist resentment of the banks and isolationist hostility to the rest. Zdzislaw Hoffman of Poland uncorked the winning jump on his penultimate effort and bettered it on his final jump (57 feet, 2 inches) yesterday to win the triple jump and his second gold medal of the World Track and Field Championships. This was a lively competition, with the Scandinavian crowd warming up to eventual runnerup Willie Banks, a law student at UCLA. He played to the crowd, and they took to him. "Today was something very special," said Banks. For anyone who has applied for a mortgage or car loan at a local bank, answered the endless questions and waited for the tedious approval process to end, it is tough to understand how a country like Brazil can borrow $70 billion from world banks. After all, Brazil isn't taking in enough dollars from selling goods on world markets to pay back the loans. And its finance minister says without blushing that the country will never pay off its debts. It will just roll them over. Related Articles
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