Down-Under Plan

It was the third biggest loan in the World Bank's history, and the fastest ever negotiated; instead of the usual months of negotiations, it had taken just 20 days for Australia to borrow a cool $100 million.* The loan was formalized last week in Washington's whitestone World Bank building, when tall, lean World Bank President Eugene R. Black and short, stocky Australian Ambassador Norman J. O. Makin briskly signed their names to a stack of papers (30 signatures apiece).

Australia will spend the cash in the U.S. during the next two years, buying heavy machinery to expand her production of key raw materials and step up the output of consumers' goods. Thus, Australia aims to ease the inflationary pressures which have plagued the country since price controls were dropped two years ago (wholesale prices are shooting up at the rate of 30% annually).

On Australia's shopping list are: 1) tractors and farm machinery to help boost the nation's agricultural output, 2) bulldozers and other heavy earth-moving equipment for power projects, to increase generating capacity from the present 2,100,000 kilowatts to 5,600,000 kilowatts in 1958, 3) diesel-electric locomotives, 4) heavy excavators, stripping shovels and other mechanized mining equipment, to raise the production of steel, building materials and coal. To get more workers, Australia, which is now squeezed by a manpower shortage, is opening her gates to 200,000 immigrants a year (3 1/2% of its population).

Since all this is only a starter in the nation's five-year economic development program, Australia plans to ask the World Bank for an additional $150 million when the current loan is spent.

*The two larger World Bank loans: $250 million to France, $195 million to The Netherlands.

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