The World Bank has criticised the government’s strategy of off-loading lucrative public assets, warning that selling these prized businesses only offers short-term relief to the country’s debt crisis. The Bretton Woods institution said the money from divestiture and privatisation of key State-owned businesses is going into infrastructure projects, leaving almost no impact on the country’s debt. Clean the books, keep the machine running. That’s the deal being sold from above.
Who Pays for the Fix
The report, filed by Graham Kajilwa and published by The Standard’s Financial Standard section, said the World Bank’s warning focused on the limits of relying on asset sales to ease debt pressure. The disposals, it said, amount to a temporary measure rather than a lasting fix. That’s the whole trick of the arrangement: public wealth gets turned into cash, the cash gets rerouted, and the debt problem stays right where it is, hanging over everyone else.
The article did not name specific public assets, countries or alternative policy measures. Even so, the target was plain enough. The institution’s criticism was directed at the government’s approach to raising money through the sale of public businesses. The people at the bottom don’t get a say in these transactions. They get the bill, the austerity, and the next round of promises that the sacrifice will somehow be worth it.
What the Institution Admits
The World Bank’s own warning undercuts the logic of the sell-off. If the revenue from selling off public assets is being used for infrastructure projects, then the debt burden barely moves. The report said there will be almost no impact on the country’s debt. So the state can hand over prized businesses, call it reform, and still leave the underlying crisis intact. That’s not relief. That’s rearranging the furniture while the house burns.
The story offered no alternative policy measures, no public plan, and no route outside the same top-down machinery. That absence matters. When the only answer on the table is selling off what belongs to everyone, the so-called solution already tells you who’s expected to absorb the damage. The bosses of finance keep their language polished. The rest of society gets the consequences.
Temporary Relief, Permanent Pressure
The article described the disposals as a temporary measure rather than a lasting fix. That phrasing does a lot of work. It means the government can claim action while avoiding the deeper question of why debt keeps tightening its grip in the first place. It means public assets become bargaining chips, not shared resources. And it means the pressure doesn’t disappear; it just gets pushed down the line.
Published on August 11, 2026, the report leaves the central power relation untouched: a government deciding what gets sold, a global financial institution judging the method, and ordinary people left outside the room where the decisions are made. The World Bank may call the strategy limited. The limit is built into the system itself.
What gets sold is public. What gets protected is debt.
The article’s facts point to a familiar pattern of corporate capture and state management dressed up as fiscal responsibility. Public businesses are stripped, the proceeds are redirected, and the debt crisis remains. The machinery keeps moving. The people underneath it do the paying.