In the beginning, when we from the Philippines heard that there is going to be this trilateral SAP review, we were quite surprised that the World Bank would be willing to do a review with people's organizations and NGOs, many of whom are critics of structural adjustment. It is no secret that we from the NGOs and people's organizations are quite wary of the World Bank and in all honesty we must say that despite this process we are still very wary of the World Bank. And we welcome this SAP review as a step towards what we hope will be a more open and more productive engagement with each other. We welcome the fact that a number of governments have actually agreed to participate in this trilateral exercise. At the same time, we must express our disappointment here over the refusal of some governments to take part, and the implication of the lack of courage and transparency on their part. In these countries, we are still determined to pursue this review. We wish to reiterate that we are looking forward to the main part of the SAP review, which still has to take place, but we are thankful for this opportunity and the process, which has not exactly been tension-free but, nonetheless, has been interesting and productive thus far. |