World Bank

The World Bank on Tuesday approved spending $30 million on technical assistance to help Soviet industry, spokesman Peter Riddleberger said. Riddleberger said the money will go to improve Soviet banks and help in other ways to move the Soviet economy into a market system. The aid, the first concrete assistance to the Soviets from the World Bank, could be a step toward the eventual membership sought by Soviet President Mikhail S.

China admitted that some money lent by the World Bank had been misused for speculative investments and pledged to better oversee its international loans. The World Bank is China's single-biggest lender. About 28%--$7.74 billion--of its lending to China has been soft loans for agriculture, the China Daily reported.

Nearly a third of the world's people are poor and hungry, but the problem can be cut in half in a generation, the World Bank said Monday. Economic progress in Asia, increases in food production, technological breakthroughs and successful private lending offer hope for reductions in poverty and hunger, according to bank officials. The bank estimates that 1 billion people are hungry and malnourished and 2 billion others lack some needed vitamins.

Ukraine has applied to join the International Monetary Fund and World Bank in a move designed to win financial backing for its transition from communism to capitalism. The application should come as good news to the United States and its economic allies because it means that they will not have to bear the onus of supporting Ukraine and the other former Soviet republics on their own.

Up to $2 billion in long-delayed U.S. loans to Russia's oil and gas industry could be freed next month under a World Bank proposal to relax its loan requirements, a bank official said Monday. The official, who spoke on condition he not be named, said the World Bank staff proposed Monday that it end its insistence that Russia first adopt new economic reforms. The board that represents the bank's member countries is due to take up the proposal here Dec. 14, behind closed doors.

The World Bank said Thursday it expects to channel an extra $4 billion over the next two years to countries hard hit by the economic fallout of the Persian Gulf crisis. Alex Shakow, director of external affairs for the bank, said the extra cash would be meant to cushion social and economic disruption caused by the crisis.

The World Bank has removed two top Japanese securities firms from a billion-dollar bond underwriting group, and a newspaper reported that they were penalized because of their ties to gangsters. Nomura Securities Co., the world's largest brokerage, and Nikko Securities said they will seek to be readmitted to the group. The two companies, which have admitted dealing with a former underworld boss, were at the center of a scandal involving compensating favored clients for stock market losses.

Representatives of the 151 member nations of the World Bank, the biggest source of aid to the Third World, are expected to approve an increase to $500 million of its reserves against possible loan losses, a bank official said Monday. The official, who requested anonymity, said the increase was recommended by bank President Barber B. Conable. The bank approves loans worth about $17 billion every year.

Rich countries need to more than double the $16 billion a year they have pledged to help cut poverty around the world by 2015, and poor Asian countries and some African countries are in greatest need of the funds, a new World Bank study says. The report identified Bangladesh, India, Vietnam and Ethiopia as most in need of the aid. The document will be discussed by senior finance officials from around the world in Dubai, United Arab Emirates, at the end of the month.

The agency is expected to provide $80 million to help finance Nigeria's gas gathering and extraction project off the coast at Escravos, the Nigerian National Petroleum Corp. said. The gas gathering project will have a capacity to collect about 167 million cubic feet of gas a day. The project had been structured as a 60%-40% venture between NNPC and Chevron Nigeria Ltd., but the Nigerian equity may be reduced if the World Bank or its affiliate, the International Finance Corp.