GOVERNMENT: Help for the Backward

The World Bank came forth last week with its long awaited new baby: a world investment agency, christened the International Finance Corp. More flexible than its parent, IFC will seek out privately managed projects in the underdeveloped regions of its 31 member nations, back them with investments up to some $4,000,000. IFC will concentrate on small and medium-sized new industries in preference to utilities, housing, nonprofit social projects, agricultural schemes.

Unlike the World Bank, IFC will not require a guarantee of its capital from the government of the country in which it invests. Rather, it will take a chance that its investments will prove so successful that it can sell them at a profit to private investors.

To head the agency, World Bank President Eugene Black (TIME, June 25) tapped one of his own top lieutenants, Mississippi-born Robert L. (for Livingston) Garner, 61, who still talks in a deep Southern drawl, despite his 37 years as a Northern banker-businessman (vice president of Manhattan's Guaranty Trust Co., General Foods Corp. and, since 1947, the World Bank). Garner's IFC starts with a fund of $78.4 million, hopes to prove that private enterprise in underdeveloped countries pays off, attract other investors who might normally be wary of investing in backward lands.