World Bank loans are sensitive issues in West Bengal. The last time the government took a loan from the multilateral agency was in 1997. The amount was around Rs 750 crore. It was taken for the health sector under the Health System Development Project-2 (HSDP-2) to develop the infrastructure for district hospitals.
Before that in the 1980s a loan was negotiated for the urban transport project. But when the World Bank demanded a scrutiny of the state budgetary exercise, the Jyoti Basu government withdrew the proposal. The Left Front government’s position was that it would impinge on our sovereignty. But later, the government shed its inhibitions and started actively working with multilateral international agencies for various development projects.
However, a number of ongoing projects are being funded by global agencies. Of them, DFID (Department for International Development under the UK government) is the foremost. DFID gives grants to various projects in Bengal totaling over Rs 250 crore annually.
One of its ongoing project is funding the restructuring of the state-owned public sector enterprises.