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What
does the World Bank do?
he World Bank is the world's largest source of development assistance,
providing nearly $30 billion in loans annually to its client countries.
The Bank uses its financial resources, its highly trained staff, and its
extensive knowledge base to individually help each developing country onto
a path of stable, sustainable, and equitable growth. The main focus is
on helping the poorest people and the poorest countries, but for all its
clients the Bank emphasizes the need for:
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Investing in people, particularly
through basic health and education
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Protecting the environment
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Supporting and encouraging
private business development
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Strengthening the ability of
the governments to deliver quality services, efficiently and transparently
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Promoting reforms to create
a stable macroeconomic environment, conducive to investment and long-term
planning
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Focusing on social development,
inclusion, governance, and institution-building as key elements of poverty
reduction
The Bank is also helping countries
to strengthen and sustain the fundamental conditions they need to attract
and retain private investment. With Bank support — both lending and advice
— governments are reforming their overall economies and strengthening banking
systems. They are investing in human resources, infrastructure, and environmental
protection which enhances the attractiveness and productivity of private
investment. Through World Bank guarantees, MIGA's political risk insurance,
and in partnership with IFC's equity investments, investors are minimizing
their risks and finding the comfort to invest in developing countries and
countries undergoing transition to market-based economies.
The Bank in the 21st
Century
As the world enters the
21st century, there is room for neither gloom nor complacency.
For the countries emerging from financial crisis, the worst appears over;
prospects are brighter, to different degrees. Success for the developing
world will depend in part on economic developments in the United States,
Europe and Japan. Equally important is whether developing countries are
able to put in place the policies and structural reforms which can provide
the basis for strong growth. Worldwide, those countries will prosper which
are best able to capitalize on the opportunities of globalization while
effectively managing its risks. Those which do not adapt will fall farther
and farther behind - creating wider gaps, globally, between the haves and
have-nots.
Mindful of the challenges
ahead, the Bank is working with developing countries to pilot a more inclusive
and more integrated approach to its development mission - the Comprehensive
Development Framework (CDF). As the Bank has moved beyond simply financing
projects - and even beyond supporting only discrete policy reforms, such
as trade liberalization - to addressing broader issues such as human and
social development, governance, and institutions, the need for an integrating
framework of this kind became apparent. The CDF approach calls for a development
plan "owned" by the country itself, focused on a long-term vision of the
results to be achieved, and supported by strong partnerships among governments,
donors, civil society, the private sector and other development actors.
In launching the CDF, the
Bank has focused attention on what it sees as the essential building blocks
for effective development:
-
Structural: good governance
and clean government, an effective legal and judicial system, a well-organized
and supervised financial system, and social safety net and social programs.
-
Physical: water and
sewerage, energy, roads, transport and telecommunications, and environmental
and cultural issues.
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Specific strategies:
for rural, urban, and private sector development
Additionally, each country
has its own unique priorities. Attention to macroeconomic and fiscal issues,
trade and regulatory issues, the labor market and employment conditions,
and the role of the private sector, for example, depends on the characteristics
of the country and the results of the national dialogue about priorities
and programs needed to address them.
The CDF is essentially a
process. It is a new way of doing business, a tool to achieve greater development
effectiveness in a world challenged by poverty. In the short run, the CDF
establishes mechanisms to bring people together and build consensus; it
forges stronger partnerships that allow for strategic selectivity, and
emphasizes the achievement of concrete results. In the long run, the expectation
is that the CDF will enhance development effectiveness and contribute towards
the central goal of poverty reduction. |
