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World Bank Plans to Clear Site in Northwest for Offices

The World Bank is planning to tear down the Park Central Hotel and the former headquarters of the United States Information Agency to build a new $97 million office building, its third such project in less than three years.Last week the bank signed a 99-year lease for the site of the 10-story brown-brick building at 1776 Pennsylvania Ave. NW., that formerly housed USIA, now in new offices at 400 C St. SW. Bank officials have also signed a contract of sale for the Park Central Hotel at 705.

World Bank Chief Sees Role in Crisis The World Bank must play "an expanded role" and be "a bit more aggressive in its lending" to help meet the Third World debt crisis, according to Bank President A. W. Clausen. But American reluctance to commit the necessary resources for expansion of World Bank activities, he adds, is a constraining factor.

World Bank Plans Joint Loans For Third World Development The World Bank has announced a pilot program in which it will enter into joint loan agreements with commercial banks for Third World development projects.These new "co-financing" deals will allow the bank to invest up to $500 million in the next two years in direct participation in loans with commercial banks. Until now, co-financing with commercial banks has been limited to separate loan agreements with the borrower--one by the commercial bank or consortium.

Philadelphia Daily News (PA) - February 14, 1983 WORLD'S FAIR OFFICIAL'S BANK FOLDS OVER LOSSES The United American Bank owned by former World's Fair Chairman Jake Butcher was ordered closed today by federal and state authorities due to ''large and unusual" loan losses. It was the fourth largest bank failure in U.S. history.Tennessee Banking Commissioner Billy Adams declared Butcher's bank insolvent and said the decision was based on his department's own audit of the institution.

IMF, WORLD BANK MEET AMID A FUNDING CRISIS The treasury chiefs and central bankers of nearly 150 nations have descended on Washington for another World Bank/International Monetary Fund annual meeting, but the candid ones among them admit that they don't have any sure answers to the $600 billion to $700 billion global debt problem.The mood of imminent disaster so palpable at last year's joint session in Toronto has faded. "But the debt crisis is not over:

FOREIGN-LOAN LOSSES SEEN ANALYST WARNS BANKS TO BUILD RESERVES The world's private banks probably will have to absorb large losses from loans to developing nations such as Brazil and Mexico, but the losses will fall far short of causing a world banking collapse, an international banking analyst predicted here yesterday.Although he thought chances were remote that the world's debtor nations would refuse to pay the banks anything on their loans, analyst Robin Monro- Davies.

WORLD BANK FAILS TO RAISE 'MINIMUM' GOAL FOR LOANS TOKYO-- The World Bank Thursday failed to reach its "minimum" target of $16 billion available for loans to world's poorest nations, and the United States said it might reduce its contribution to the international lending organization by more than 30 per cent.

The World Bank and Africa IT THE WORLD BANK'S annual meeting, its president, A. W. Clausen, chided his shareholders--the world's governments--for their hesitations. The world, and in particular the World Bank, knows a lot about successful techniques for raising standards of living in the Third World. "What is lacking," Mr. Clausen observed, "is a firm commitment on the part of the international community to act while the window of opportunity is still open.

ORGANIZERS: NEW BANK 'IN LIMBO' A falling-out among organizers of Bank of World, a new bank planned for North Philadelphia, has put the project "in limbo" more than two months after it was to have opened its doors, some organizers say.The group of Korean businessmen who organized the bank originally hoped to open in early August in a former First Pennsylvania Bank office at 5001 N. Broad St. Their plan was to serve the Logan neighborhood of North Philadelphia, particularly the area's.

World Bank to Speed Loans The World Bank yesterday approved a "special action program," designed to speed up disbursement of $2 billion in planned loans over the next 24 months. These will go to developing nations to help relieve accumulated economic pressures, including the burdens of huge international debts, administration sources said last night.Most of the faster action will be directed to upper- and middle-income developing nations that borrow money at regular rates from the World.

Mexico Gets World Bank Loans The World Bank, as part of its "special action" programs to help Third World nations overcome problems associated with huge debt, yesterday approved two loans for Mexico totaling $525 million, the largest amount ever approved by the Bank for Mexico at one time.One loan, for $350 million is to Mexico's National Foreign Trade Bank to help stimulate non-oil exports.

WORLD BANK REDUCES ITS LOAN RATES The World Bank Wednesday announced a reduction in its interest rate on loans to developing countries from 11.43 per cent to 10.97 per cent.The reduction applies to outstanding loans issued since July by the bank's main arm, the International Bank for Reconstruction and Development, and to new IBRD loans. It is the first semi-annual rate change since July, when the bank announced a policy of charging variable interest rates on IBRD loans starting that month.

Study Faults Plans For Consolidating Third World Debt Former World Bank president Robert S. McNamara and his French and Japanese colleagues today sharply criticized proposals for consolidation of Third World debts into long-term loans at lower interest rates.In a report to the Trilateral Commission, McNamara; Takeshi Watanabe, a former senior Japanese diplomat; and French economics professor Jacques Lesourne argued that the seriousness of the debt crisis has been overstated.

WORLD LENDING DECLINES, IMF SAYS Concerned that international loans have become riskier, banks reduced their world lending in 1982 and are making further reductions this year, the International Monetary Fund reported yesterday.Loans to poor countries, which use them to help pay for purchases from the United States and other developed countries, have been especially affected. But more affluent countries are increasingly dependent on the poor countries for business and jobs.

Banking on the Third World IT IS THE FATE of reformists to have eggs lobbed at them from all sides. They cannot back up against a #line missing# bate; those walls are manned by people whose dislike of each other is exceeded only by their mutual contempt for the softies in the middle. Awkward, for an individual reformist. Much worse if you happen to be the world's largest development bank, your offices in a city with an unlimited supply of eggs.Since the World Bank opened its doors in Washington in 1946.

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