Bank of Bahia
 Headquarters in Edudzi Agyeman City | |
| Abbreviation | BdB |
|---|---|
| Formation | 12 May 1988 |
| Type | International financial institution |
| Legal status | Treaty |
| Purpose | Regional development Providing financial bailouts to Bahian states with balance of payments difficulties |
| Headquarters | Edudzi Agyeman City, Asase Lewa Kwamuimepe, Kitaubani |
Region served | Bahia |
Membership |  Asase Lewa KitaubaniInsert yourselves |
Official language | Gaullican |
Main organ |
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| Website | bdb.org |
The Bank of Bahia (Gaullican: Banque de Baïe) is an international finance and development finance institution headquartered in Edudzi Agyeman City, Asase Lewa and Kwamuimepe, Kitaubani. The Bank was established by the governments of Asase Lewa and Kitaubani in order to provide development financing and debt relief for Bahian states. Founded with an authorised capital of $10 billion in 1988, the BdB was primarily created in order to provide Bahian states with an alternative to the Global Institute for Fiscal Affairs, which provided extensive debt relief with the stipulation of adopting Economic Restructuring Programs programs. Since its inception, however, the BdB has gradually expanded to provide funds for infrastructure and economic development. The BdB has also become closely associated with the Bank for United Development of the International Forum for Developing States, established at a similar period as the BdB, though also seeking to provide an alternative to the GIFA among Bahian states geopolitically unaligned with the BDU's key backers, Shangea and Zorasan.
Though the area the BdB seeks to cover is coterminous with that of the Congress of Bahian States, the BdB is unaffiliated with the CBS. Though its internal structure differes from that of the GIFA—in that voting power does not entirely correspond to shareholders—the BdB also lacks the CBS's one-member, one-vote structure, with additional votes allotted to the BdB's founding states of Asase Lewa and Kitaubani and to creditor states. An influential organization in furthering economic development on the Bahian subcontinent, the BdB is a controversial organization in the region, with supporters lauding the Bank as a powerful opponent of Euclean neocolonialism and proponent of anti-imperialist South-South cooperation and critics arguing that the BdB's member states of Asase Lewa and Kitaubani have mantained a paternalistic towards other Bahian states and favored those states' economic interests at the expense of other Bahian states.
History
During the 1980s, the foreign policies of two of Bahia's wealthiest states—Asase Lewa and Kitaubani, whose relationship had been highly adversarial in the initial decades after independence—moderated significantly. With the collapse of the Mabifian Democratic Republic in 1979, a decline in most Councilist guerilla movements that Asase Lewa traditionally suported, and the Psychological-Technological Revolution of 1981, Asalewan foreign policy became significantly less interventionist and realist, willing to forge geopolitical alliances with ideological adversaries for economic reasons. A similar political shift occurred in Kitaubani, where the end of the Dirty War and liberalization of the country's constitutional monarchy enabled the ascension of social-democratic and left-wing populist elements to political power that pursued a far less adversial relationship with Asase Lewa and far less cordial relationship with Werania, Kitaubani's primary ally after independence. The result of these shifts in Asalewan and Kitauban foreign policy was an inaguration of widespread détente and strategic cooperation on mutual interests by the mid-1980s.
Simultaneous to this growing détente in Asalewan-Kitauban relations, following the Recession of 1980, numerous developing countries, including the states of Bahia, suffered from an escalating debt crisis, forcing numerous states to pursue debt relief. In previous generations many left-wing Global South states, including in Bahia, secured substantial financial assistance through the Association of Emerging Socialist Economies; however, the collapse of the AESE, and substantial crisis within one of its main Global North sponsors, Valduvia, severely reduced Global South states' outlets for debt relief outside the Global Institute for Fiscal Affairs, which only granted debt relief in response to Economic Restructuring Programs, entailing, among other things, the mass privatization of state assets, layoff of public sector employees, and substantial austerity measures.
In this environment, a number of Global South states and activists sought to establish alternative financial institutions to the GIFA. Globally, this most prominently entailed Shangea and Zorasan's establishment for the International Forum for Developing States and its associated Bank for Unified Development in 1985. During the 1980s, however, the success and substantial growth of the IFDS and BDU that would occur in later decades was not necessarily guaranteed, nor was the BDU's involvement in member states traditionally unaligned to Shangea and Zorasan. Though Asase Lewa and Kitaubani experienced substantial economic and political crisis, like their Bahian neighbors, this crisis was far less profound than in other Bahian states, such as Tiwura; then as new, both states were comparatively wealthy and by the late 1980s began to witness a long-term period, continuing to this day, of economic growth and prosperity, in Asase Lewa thanks to the intensified exploitation of the country's petroleum resources and in Kitaubani thanks to export-oriented industrialization, that resulted in a substantial growth in the countries' foreign exchange reserves.
In this environment, the Asalewan and Kitauban states consequently sought to also create their own international financial institution for Bahian states, seeking first and foremost to prevent the increasing assumption of Economic Restructuring Policies that had been substantially adopted by other Bahian states. Though designed in large part as a way for Asase Lewa and Kitaubani to aid one another, the Bank of Bahia became joined by other member states; Asase Lewa's long-term ally Nahrun quickly joined the Bank of Bahia, as did other Bahian states such as [X].
Though debt relief remained the chief focus of the Bank of Bahia throughout the 1990s, increasing economic and political stability throughout Bahia in the late 1990s and 2000s meant that the Bank of Bahia's emphasis gradually shifted to broader economic development, especially financing infrastructure projects, as a broad-based development finance institution. Furthermore, the IFDS's expansion throughout this period—and the rise of Shangea and Zorasan globally—meant that the BDU emerged as the Bank of Bahia's key partner, with both banks frequently co-financing various development projects throughout the continent. This increasing partnership culminated in procedural changes to the BdB's governance in 2008, granting a small amount of voting power to non-Bahian financing nations—primarily, though not exclusively, Shangea, Zorasan, Valduvia, and Dezevau—while still investing most decision-making power in the founding states of Asase Lewa and Kitaubani. In the modern period, the BdB remains extensively involved in debt relief and development financing in collaboration with the BDU, though is sometimes criticized for allegedly benefitting Asase Lewa and Kitaubani at the expense of other, poorer Bahian states.
Organization
The Bank of Bahia is formally governed by a twelve-member Board of Governors. Its internal structure diverges sharply from institutions like the Global Institute for Fiscal Affairs; rather than being based primarily on special drawing rights or the financial contributions of each member state, the BdB's structure is fixed and unchanging; as the founding members, Asase Lewa and Kitaubani both retain the right to appoint three members each to the Board of Governors. Other member states of the Bank of Bahia retain the right to collectively elect three members to tee Board of Governors according to a one-member, one-vote system. The remaining quarter of seats of the Board of Governors are elected based on states' financial contributions. Though historically Asase Lewa and Kitaubani have been the primary contributors and creditors of the Bank of Bahia, in modern times—especially after the BdB allowed non-Bahian creditor states to exercise voting power in 2008—other states have emerged as major creditors, primarily Shangea, Zorasan, Valduvia, and Dezevau.
Criticism
Though in the late 1980s and early 1990s the Bank of Bahia was much-praised for its anti-imperialist credentials and furthering South-South cooperation, in modern times the Bank has come under substantial criticism for allegedly favoring the interests of its founders, Asase Lewa and Kitaubani, at the expense of other, poorer Bahian states. Detractors of the BdB especially criticize its internal governance, which disproportionately empowers Asase Lewa and Kitaubani and to a lesser extent other creditor states, though the Asalewan and Kitauban states themselves claim this is necessary because these states' historical role in staunchly opposing Euclean neocolonialism means they are better advocates of Bahian interests than other Bahian states.
In addition to this perceived paternalistic attitude, the BdB's detractors also allege that it has become a tool for furthering Asalewan and Kitauban interests more broadly. These critics argue that the BdB's infrastructure projects in non-founder member states have been primarily focused on intensifying the extraction of primary commodities in these states and the shipment of these primary commodities, at relatively low prices consistent with international market values, to Asase Lewa and Kitaubani for refining , industrial processing, and export at the higher prices industrial goods reach on the international market. Rather than enabling the industrialization of other Bahian countries, therefore, these critics argue that the BdB's development projects primarily enable the founder states' ascension to semi-periphery status while leaving most Bahian states languishing in a primarily peripheral role. For example, these critics especially criticize Asase Lewa's longstanding relationship with its much poorer neighbor and ally in Nahrun, arguing that the BdB has intensified a longstanding exploitative relationship between the two states.
These critics also argue, though to a somewhat lesser extent, that the Bank of Bahia has served Asase Lewa and Kitaubani's larger geopolitical objectives; during the 1990s, for example, the BdB encouraged member states to pair development financing with military cooperation on counterterrorism issues, an act widely interpreted as an Asalewan attempt to encourage the Nahrune and Tiwuran governments to cooperate with it in stemming the flow of arms to the Lokpa Spiritual Freedom Army during the Lokpaland insurgency and capturing LSFA soldiers fleeing Asase Lewa for those bordering states.