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| http://www.redpepper.org.uk/KYE/x-kye-Aug2003.html
By Solomon Hughes
August 2003
Iraq’s battered health system is set to be privatised following the US
government’s decision to hand control of it to Abt Associates, a profit-making
consultancy that specialises in sell-offs. Abt was awarded the contract by the
US Agency for International Development (Usaid) back in April. There were no
rival bidders.
Founded by Clark Abt in 1965, the Massachusetts-based firm has an annual
turnover of £115m. It already has a five-year USaid contract ‘to help
governments develop privatisation programmes’ around the world.
Elsewhere in the Middle East, Abt was central to the privatisations of Jordan’s
water and sewage systems and of Tunisian nationalised industries such as the
state airline Tunisair. The firm also has a £28m contract to give ‘technical
assistance on health service privatisations’ in former Soviet states like
Kazakhstan. It boasts: ‘Abt Associates has been a major contributor to worldwide
economic reforms that transfer major economic sectors [from public] to private
investment and control.’
The good relations between Abt and the US government hit a slight rocky patch in
1999 when the firm paid $1.9m to settle charges relating to alleged invoicing
irregularities. Abt had been charging Washington for work done by subcontractors
before the smaller firms were paid; the practice is prohibited by US federal
rules. Abt admitted no wrongdoing, but coughed up the cash to end the
prosecution.
The Iraq contract is worth an initial £6m. To begin with the consultancy will
assess and stabilise Iraq’s hospitals and pull together a new health ministry.
The second part of the contract will involve the ‘strengthening’ of health
services through ‘reconstruction’. Abt’s international vice president is former
Usaid official Janet Ballantyne. She told Red Pepper that the firm ‘may well
make a recommendation on privatisation’, although that would ‘ultimately be a
political decision’.
Abt is also one of 10 firms invited by USaid to bid for a contract to privatise
all of Iraq’s other nationalised industries. The Bush administration decided to
break up Iraq’s large state-run sector (consisting of around 100
government-owned firms) without consulting any Iraqi political institutions.
The other nine shortlisted firms include the rival consultancy Booz Allen
Hamilton (BAH). Influential Washington hawk and former CIA director James
Woolsey is a vice president at BAH. Woolsey, who was a tireless lobbyist for war
on Iraq, heads BAH’s ‘global strategic security practice’. The practice was set
up specifically to chase ‘war-on-terror’ contracts.
In April Washington promised that Abt would ‘ensure the rapid normalisation of
health services in Iraq’. But Ballantyne says that her firm is still involved in
‘reconnaissance and survey work’. Security difficulties are slowing down
progress.
Abt has requested armoured cars for its staff. The high cost of these vehicles
will eat into the budget set aside for revitalising the Iraqi health service.
And the company is delaying the importation of medical machinery like kidney
dialysis machines until the security situation improves.
Funded by oil revenues, Iraq’s health service used to be one of the best in the
region, but years of sanctions and the recent war and looting have left it a
shadow of its former self. Right now, Ballantyne says, privatisation must wait;
‘there is nothing to privatise at the moment’.
Instead, Abt is currently concentrating on installing machinery in Iraqi flour
mills that will add vital vitamins to bread and could thus help reduce growing
infant mortality and malnutrition.
http://www.redpepper.org.uk/KYE/x-kye-Aug2003.html
Alan
"Can't you see we're still here,
Can't you see we're still here,
Singing loud; Singing clear,
We shall not go under,
We're still here."
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