ABSTRACT
There has also been much donor taciturnity in confronting state corruption, especially that which occurred in the implementation of economic reforms. The IMF and World Bank have tended to be muted in their criticism of any abuses in the way economic reforms have been carried out. Uganda’s privatization reforms have fallen prey to corruption by state elites, but such corrupt actions have elicited hardly any serious critical comment from the IFIs. This has also been the case even where military corruption and the costs of military intervention in neighbouring Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) in 1998 impeded economic performance. On both of these issues, the IFIs as well as the bilateral donors did little other than to express concern about their potential impact on Uganda’s development prospects (Reno 2002). Indeed, at the World Bank CG meeting in Kampala in December 1998, although the Bank and individual donor countries expressed concern over the high rate of graft in government – particularly in the privatization process, and the Ministry of Agriculture – and complained about rising defence expenditures following Uganda’s military involvement in the DRC, the donors agreed to provide Uganda with aid that was almost double the amount the finance ministry was asking for (Financial Times 11 December 1998).
