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Finance The Pipeline Essay

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The Chad-Cameroon Petroleum Development and Pipeline Project was one that helped finance the pipeline with World Bank funds as well as funds from some other sources and lenders in the world. Chad had a lot of oil but being landlocked had no way to bring the oil to market. And as one of the poorest nations on earth, it didn't have the funds to build a pipeline. The IMF and World Bank got involved to help coalesce efforts towards success. There were $600 million in investments. $100 million from the IFC (private arm of World Bank), $200 million from France's COFACE. The US Import-Export Bank invested $200 million and private lenders coordinated by the IFC invested an additional $100 million. 1

So far as how the project went, initially you could …show more content…

"However, President Idris Deby's government announced in 2005 that oil money would go toward the general budget and the purchase of weapons, or else oil companies would be expelled. Now Deby spends the oil money on regime survival and rigged elections." 3

Could this negative impact have been avoided? No. Not without completely replacing the governments of the borrowing nations. Of course if the project were not to have been funded then of course the negative impacts of actions of an unpredictable dictator could be avoided but in this case the project would not have been funded. We must ask for sober answers to the longing question, can good be done with investment money to very poor nations with governments that are unaccountable?

The biggest problem with this disaster is that ultimately the people of Chad and Cameroon must repay the loans, it comes out of the equity share they receive from the oil companies operating the project. Those funds that are paying off the loans could have benefited the people of Chad as intended, but instead they went to pay for weapons of war so that President Idris Deby could stay in power through "rigged elections"

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