IFC maintains “clear development benefits” result from its African mining investments
14 November 2007
The claim runs contrary to a recent report which found that over 40 percent of IFC projects implemented between 1996 and 2006 failed to deliver positive development results.
According to Reuters, the International Finance Corporation (IFC) will commit 75 to 80 percent of its total mining portfolio this year to Africa. One of the IFC’s senior mining division executives, William Bulmer, told Reuters that its mining portfolio has been “fairly modest” to date, but that he “expect[s] that to increase significantly.”
Bulmer also said that the IFC was seeing “a total convergence in the sort of objectives that we have as a development bank to those of successful mining companies,” and that he “expects clear development benefits to come out of projects.” Civil society groups, however, have been critical of the IFC’s support for the mining sector in Africa, precisely because they feel the IFC’s objectives have been too closely aligned with that of mining companies: to earn a substantial profit. Recent years have seen heightened public attention to the harmful social and environmental track-record of many mining projects in Africa, and their adverse impacts on the poor.
There are other reasons to question Bulmer’s optimistic view that mining projects will deliver “clear development benefits.” In August 2007, the IFC’s own evaluation unit, the Independent Evaluation Group (IEG), released a report which found that over 40 percent of IFC projects implemented between 1996 and 2006 failed to deliver positive development results, and that the Corporation performed particularly poorly in Africa. A September 2006 briefing paper by civil society organizations questioned the IFC’s investments in gold mining, and challenged the IFC to prove that these projects lead to poverty reduction. To date, however, the IFC does not publicly report on the impacts of its individual projects, making it difficult for civil society groups to assess whether it fulfills its development mandate.
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