Weekly Report - 26 April 2007

ECUADOR: World Bank in firing line. President Rafael Correa plans to expel Ecuador's World Bank representative, Eduardo Somensatto, for promoting economic policies that destroyed jobs between 2002 and 2004. Correa lashed out at the World Bank and the IMF when revealing a new US$2.84bn social welfare plan that aims to improve education, health and urban development and generate 300,000 jobs over the next three years. Correa said he was ejecting Somensatto from the country for freezing a US$100m loan in 2005 in response to Ecuador's reform of a law governing oil funds. "This international bureaucracy blackmailed a sovereign country for modifying a national law," he said. Ecuador owes the World Bank US$748m. Correa did not spell out exactly how his social plan will be funded: presumably not by the World Bank; perhaps by the Banco del Sur, once it is set up. Correa also cancelled Ecuador's US$11.4m debt with the IMF.

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