ECONOMICS: Money from the Bank

To further the industrial revolution in Yugoslavia, the World Bank last week gave Communist Marshal Tito a $30 million loan. The loan will include no dollars, but it will be the biggest mixture of European currencies ever passed in one package by the World Bank—some $10 million in French francs, $7,500,000 in Swiss francs, the rest in British pounds, Belgian francs, German marks, Austrian schillings, Italian lire, Dutch guilders, Norwegian kroner and Swedish kronor.

The World Bank (a loan pool of 54 nations, started at Bretton Woods, N.H. in 1944) said that the money would go into 27 construction and development programs in electric power, coal mining, extraction and processing of nonferrous metals, iron and steel, some manufacturing industries, forestry and transportation. Most projects are to be completed by 1956, and are expected to boost Yugoslav industrial output by at least 30%. Examples: production capacity for iron ore should go up by 900,000 tons, pig iron by 260,000 tons, steel ingots by 275,000 tons, finished steel products by 195,000 tons. Most of the things Yugoslavia needs to buy can be bought from European countries and her trade pattern makes it easier to pay back in European currencies. "We like to make loans that are going to be paid back," explained World Bank President Eugene R. Black.

The loan is the third granted to Tito by the World Bank (the first, $2,700,000 in U.S. dollars in 1949; the second, $28 million in European currencies in 1950) since he broke with Moscow and won the wary support of the West. Tito's regime has also received $297 million in loans and grants plus unrevealed millions in military aid from the U.S. in the past three years.