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Viewing cable 06VIENTIANE307, ADB EXAMINES ITS OPTIONS IN A DONOR-DRIVEN ECONOMY

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Reference ID Created Released Classification Origin
06VIENTIANE307 2006-03-31 09:13 2011-08-30 01:44 CONFIDENTIAL Embassy Vientiane
Appears in these articles:
http://www.mcclatchydc.com/2011/04/22/112679/wikileaks-cables-bare-secrets.html
VZCZCXRO8325
RR RUEHCHI RUEHDT RUEHHM
DE RUEHVN #0307/01 0900913
ZNY CCCCC ZZH
R 310913Z MAR 06
FM AMEMBASSY VIENTIANE
TO RUEHC/SECSTATE WASHDC 9765
INFO RUEHZS/ASSOCIATION OF SOUTHEAST ASIAN NATIONS
RUEHBJ/AMEMBASSY BEIJING 1928
RUEHPB/AMEMBASSY PORT MORESBY 0035
RUEHUL/AMEMBASSY SEOUL 0487
RUEHKO/AMEMBASSY TOKYO 1036
RUEHCHI/AMCONSUL CHIANG MAI 0315
RUEHHK/AMCONSUL HONG KONG 7701
RUEATRS/DEPT OF TREASURY WASHDC
C O N F I D E N T I A L SECTION 01 OF 04 VIENTIANE 000307 
 
SIPDIS 
 
SIPDIS 
 
DEPT FOR EAP/MLA AND EB 
DEPT PASS TO USAID AND USTR 
MANILA PASS TO ADB, AMB SPELTZ 
 
E.O. 12958: DECL: 03/31/2011 
TAGS: EAID EFIN PGOV PHUM ECON LA
SUBJECT: ADB EXAMINES ITS OPTIONS IN A DONOR-DRIVEN ECONOMY 
 
REF: VIENTIANE 212 
 
VIENTIANE 00000307  001.2 OF 004 
 
 
Classified By: amb. Patricia Haslach. reason 1.4 b and d 
 
1. (C) Summary.  As part of a new Country Strategy and 
Program (CSP), the Asian Development Bank (ADB) is to re-vamp 
and trim its lending and granting policies for Laos.  This is 
partly in response to criticisms of ADB projects from 
development partners, but mostly due to ADB guidelines for 
continued assistance following GoL recalcitrance in promised 
reforms over more than a decade of easy money.  The prospect 
of changes in ADB foci in Laos seems promising, though the 
CSP is still vaguely worded and likely to remain so to avoid 
alarming the GoL.  In fact, ADB's development priorities in 
Laos need to be reversed.  End Summary. 
 
Janus meets Janus 
----------------- 

2. (U) During the first week of March the Asian Development 
Bank (ADB) in Vientiane hosted a sit-down with interested 
donors and missions to review its record and offer the 
outline of a gradually developing plan for the Bank's future 
activities in Laos, summed up in the Country Strategy and 
Program (CSP).  Evidently in response to criticism of past 
ADB projects, there will be some shifts in emphasis - away 
from a broad, indeed scatter-shot approach to development of 
"big" sectors like energy and transportation (in lock-step 
with the desires of the GoL), and toward (equally broad and 
really quite vague) "pro-poor growth", "inclusive social 
development", "good governance", and "regional integration". 
There is to be more care for consultation with development 
partners and donors, which we would welcome.  The new CSP is 
intended to be: "mindful of risks, while helping Laos move to 
a higher growth and socio-economic development trajectory 
that is sustainable, employment intensive, and safeguards 
options for future generations".  Some observers felt 
justified in questioning whether there will be significant 
changes. 
 
3. (SBU) The meeting was a useful venue for some frank talk, 
but had schizophrenic aspects, as well.  The ADB Resrep led 
off with an upbeat if somewhat fey overview.  His 
presentation was well crafted and collegial, offering 
coordination and soliciting input and critique, but contained 
items that gave his interlocutors considerable pause.  Among 
them, that further ADB engagement in Laos is justified 
because: 
A - Poverty rates are falling (that is happening only in a 
few areas). 
B - There has been progress on Millennium Development Goals 
(but not on non-income MDGs - i.e. on the governance-related 
ones). 
C - There is robust GDP growth among vibrant regional 
economies (strong neighboring economies and rampant 
extractive resource exploitation are producing a simulacrum 
of GDP growth). 
D - FDI inflows are increasing (mostly from China - Laos 
remains one of the most difficult places in the world to 
invest and do business). 
E - Decision making has devolved to provinces and villages 
(Any real decision must still go to the top of the politburo 
for consideration, even for things like "will we allow a 
fashion show in Vientiane?"). 
F - There has been improvement in core governance areas such 
as rule of law, more sound financial management, public 
service reforms, and people's participation (that is flatly 
untrue - all of it). 
The ADB Resrep also cited some "country risks" in Laos, but 
merely implied that governance in Laos is not up to snuff, 
and certainly did not spell out that the GoL, long the 
recipient of so much aid, is the whole problem.  If the 
purpose of the oddly upbeat presentation from the Resrep was 
to forestall counterblasts from the assembled donors and NGOs 
in front of his official visitors from ADB Manila, it didn't 
work. 
 
Collared 
-------- 

4. (SBU) The core message was yet to come.  The Resrep was 
followed by his ADB visitors, who explained why ADB must now 
begin to lend to Laos according to a "collar" of 
performance-based standards, like those applied to other 
countries. The reason: Laos has not performed as promised. 
ADB is now obligated by its own guidelines to impose some 
limits on its program funding in Laos, due to GoL failures to 
toe the mark in reforms over the past 15 years.  This collar 
may or may not result in real reductions on grants (cutbacks 
of approximately 50 percent were mentioned).  Eighteen 
criteria with reference to financial management, rule of law, 
transparency, and other aspects of governance, are to come 
into play whenever a program for Laos comes into 
consideration.  The GoL is utterly remiss in all these areas, 
and this is the very rock on which the IMF poverty reduction 
program in Laos foundered. 
 
ADB does some good stuff here 
----------------------------- 

5. (C) ADB comes in for a lot of criticism, some of it 
undeserved.  They are faulted by donors for throwing too much 
money in too many directions, and for not watching what is 
done with it very closely.  The Japanese Embassy in Vientiane 
(ironically, itself the source of a great deal of feckless 
donorship) opines that ADB Manila is preoccupied with its 
programs in China, India, and other large developing 
economies, and therefore pays little heed to the quality of 
its programming in tiny Laos.  The result is loose 
programming, looser project oversight, and sloppy budget 
control.  The Japanese therefore now require that each 
program be explained to them individually by ADB 
representatives, a practice Post will emulate.  Some 
ADB-funded development schemes have gone seriously awry right 
from the conceptual get-go, such as pushing industrial tree 
plantation in the north of the country - a large part of 
which is fast becoming a Chinese, Thai, and Indonesian 
commercial rubber plantation zone in which the forests have 
disappeared and the traditional livelihoods and access rights 
of villagers are shoved aside. 
 
6. (C) However, ADB's successes should not be discounted. 
Just as there would be no health care to speak of in Laos 
without the Global Fund, there would be no infrastructural 
development to speak of without Japanese and ADB largesse. 
Infant mortality has dropped, the population is growing fast 
(though with no educational system or job market to receive 
all the young people), and there are some new roads and other 
kinds of infrastructure.  The rural electrification effort 
ADB has mounted over the past decade has been a fine example 
of how development ought to work. 
 
But it costs a lot. . . 
----------------------- 

7. (C) . . . . so maybe the multilateral donors who fund ADB 
in order to promote economic growth and free market reforms 
should get some such reforms in exchange.  The average ADB 
loan in Laos is $11 million.  For the period between 1995 and 
2005 alone, $710 million in loans came Laos' way (grants only 
kicked in during 2005), $557 of it direct, and $154 million 
for broader, regional use.  Of the money given directly to 
Laos, 28 percent went to transportation and communications, 
20 percent to urban water supply and sanitation, 19 percent 
to energy-related projects, 12 percent to agriculture and 
natural resource exploitation, 8 percent to finance, industry 
and trade development, 8 percent to education, 5 percent to 
health and nutrition.  ADB prides itself on the degree to 
which its programs dovetail with the GoL's 5-year development 
plan and its 20-year plan for poverty reduction.  The former 
is a Communist Party document that only this year, for the 
first time, contains any reference to the poverty reduction 
goals, and (also a first) has been glimpsed by donors before 
being graven in stone.  The latter is a wholly donor-made and 
donor-driven document intended to justify largesse, and quite 
deficient in proposals to develop private enterprise and a 
free economy.  This year (also a first) the donor's poverty 
reduction plan was at least mentioned in the draft 5-year 
plan. 
 
Is more aid the solution? 
------------------------- 

8. (C) Despite two generations of aid from successive 
congeries of donors (American, then Soviet, then 
international), this is still an extremely poor country, if 
one does not belong to the political elite.  Although GoL 
ministers and officials with salaries of less that 75 dollars 
per month sport villas and cars worthy of Monte Carlo, GDP 
per capita is still officially less than $400 (probably a lot 
less - GoL figures have a good deal of wish fulfillment to 
them).  Debt amounts to 80 percent of GDP.  Unemployment is 
epidemic, underemployment is endemic, crime is rising, and 
the investment climate is among the least hospitable in the 
world.  The tiny banking sector is opaque and remains an 
non-performing loan (NPL) factory for SOEs and other forms of 
crony lending, despite IFI attempts to install reforms. 
 
9. (C) It's no accident that these economic ills are not 
addressed.  There is almost no rule of law or basic human 
freedom in Laos, and education is in the hands of a corrupt 
and ideologically hidebound ministry that uses ADB money to 
build a grandiose but unnecessary new ministry building while 
rural children sit on logs and try to remember what a teacher 
looked like.  Any motion on the part of the GoL, however 
insignificant, is greeted with applause from donors wont to 
treat even stonewalling as cause for guarded optimism. 
Almost every donor publication that discusses the economy 
touts the GoL's New Economic Mechanism (NEM) of the mid-1980s 
as a turning point toward a brighter future.  In fact, the 
NEM is almost identical to the New Economic Policy (NEP) 
installed by Lenin in the nascent USSR in 1921, suggesting 
that the regime in Laos thinks it has plenty of time to hold 
the outside world at arm's length. 
 
Whose fault is this? 
-------------------- 

10. (C) It is a commonplace among foreign representatives in 
Vientiane that Laos has donors and foreign NGOs (indigenous 
NGOs are forbidden), instead of good government. There's a 
simple reason for that - by bankrolling the government here 
donors insulate it from pressures to change.  Now that the 
Chinese are in the investment and aid games with both feet, 
it may be that a 15-year opportunity to elicit reforms in 
exchange for aid and budget support (since the collapsing 
Soviets withdrew their aid) is lost.  Whether that is the 
case or not, at last there is a belated measure of donor 
stock-taking.  Reftel recounted the GoL's sorry record in 
living up to its obligations under International Financial 
Institution programs, and the attitudes the IFIs are 
displaying about it. 
 
11. (C) In fact, though, no one is likely to really do much. 
The several IFIs have different corporate cultures, but 
singly or collectively they have never held the host 
government's feet to the fire when one of their supposedly 
interlocking programs is thwarted.  In Laos, of the three 
(IMF, World Bank, and Asian Development Bank), the IMF is 
most often openly critical of the GoL, while ADB is most 
egregiously prepared to overlook poor performance in the 
interests of uninterrupted disbursement. 
 
12. (C) Comment: It is a great pity that a half-century of 
aid and the GoL's manifest dependence on it has not been 
translated into leverage for reform.  This has not happened 
because neither the Japanese (the largest bilateral donor), 
nor ADB (the largest multilateral) have a sense of what such 
a fulcrum might be used for.   Now that ADB is claiming to be 
re-thinking development priorities, those priorities should 
be reversed.  Health, nutrition, and education projects 
(provided there is a heavy ration of curriculum reform) are 
morally unambiguous and do not directly benefit a bankrupt, 
corrupt, and reflexively repressive regime.  Small business 
development is likewise a potentially productive way to go, 
especially in that it may result in something akin to a civil 
society - or at least an interest group not entirely under 
the thumb of the Communist Party.  These worthy things have 
had the short end of the ADB development stick heretofore, 
and the vague promise that they will now be given greater 
weight should be lived up to.  In contrast, infrastructure 
development, while doubtless to the good, is seized upon by 
the regime as a badge of all they have done to develop the 
country, and why one and all should acquiesce in their 
remaining in power.  Such large construction projects are 
also most readily tuned to the purposes of corrupt GoL 
contracting patronage networks.  Donors who wring their hands 
quietly over human rights abuses, and the GoL's refusal to 
reform much of anything, are to consider that to bankroll a 
regime like this one is to be complicit in its career. 
HASLACH