Continuation of the controversy aroused around the last report of the World Bank monitoring the economic situation of Algeria. Very criticized in particular by the official Algerian press agency APS and certain persons in charge, the institution of Bretton Woods ended up reacting.
The report, published on December 22, gave a mixed picture of the situation of the Algerian economy and made gloomy forecasts, warning of “an economic earthquake” because of the “vulnerability” of Algerian exports, strongly dominated by hydrocarbons.
On December 28, APS accused the World Bank of going outside “its framework of an international financial institution to turn into a tool of manipulation and propaganda”, which distills “biased and underhand information on the economic situation in Algeria”.
On January 4, the official agency returned to the charge, accusing the vice-president of the World Bank, the Tunisian Farid Belhaj, of having drafted the text under dictation from Morocco.
Between the two dispatches, Prime Minister Aïmene Benabderrahmane spoke on December 31 and tried to calm things down, indicating in particular that the content of the report is not totally negative.
This Thursday, January 6, the World Bank officially reacted by means of a press release posted on its website. She said at the outset that some of the articles which addressed the report “included factually inaccurate information on the content of the report, which was prepared with the greatest rigor, as well as on its authors, a team of economists working in the region. of the Maghreb”
The World Bank recalls that it regularly produces economic reports for its member countries and ensures that the one in question “has been subject to a thorough quality review before publication” and “is based exclusively on public data. , the reference of which appears in the document, or on data provided by the authorities of the member countries.”
“These words will not be answered”
“The conclusions of the report are consistent with the official data available at the closing date of the data of the report (November 1, 2021), most of which are presented in the Conjoncture of the Bank of Algeria published on December 22, 2021”, specifies the press release.
“We have noted with regret that some of the articles cited above have adopted language which may have gone beyond the thoughts of their anonymous authors. Unacceptable as they are, these remarks will not be answered, as we consider that they cannot support an argument nor do they constitute an element of debate ”, answers the World Bank to the criticisms which targeted it and contained in particular in APS dispatches, three in total.
“The World Bank Group is an international development institution made up of member countries with the twin goals of ending extreme poverty and promoting shared prosperity. Algeria, a valued member of the World Bank Group, is represented on the Bank’s Board of Directors. The staff and management of the World Bank Group serve the purposes of the institution only,” the statement concluded.
As a reminder, in the report of December 22, it was specified that the Algerian authorities, represented by the Ministry of Finance, took note of the content of the document before its publication.
