Vice president of programs and senior fellow Todd Moss is quoted in the Financial Times about changes in the global development banks.
Bob Zoellick summed up the “new age of globalisation” faced by public policy students after they left the Pardee RAND Graduate school in Santa Monica, California, in June.
He said the balance of power in the world economy had shifted, with developing countries now the “engines of global growth” and desiring to be “stewards of their own futures”.
Meanwhile, said Mr Zoellick, who was about to hand over the reins of the World Bank presidency, “policy makers will need to break free of old constraints to connect the private sector to public policies” – amid a new “pragmatism” in emerging markets regarding involving private businesses in development finance and projects.
That section of Mr Zoellick’s speech – delivered shortly before he passed the mantle to Jim Kim, his successor as World Bank chief – offers a concise summary of the huge changes the global development banks have been grappling with over the past few years, and will continue to face over the coming decade.
First, they are adapting to the new global economic order. The old notion of rich countries funding development in poor countries is no longer appropriate, as emerging markets rise in economic clout and are as much sources of development cash as they are recipients.
“If you think of the old world, it was the OECD [wealthy] countries bequeathing funding to the rest of the world, and that’s no longer the case,” says Todd Moss, vice-president for programmes and senior fellow at the Center for Global Development, a Washington think-tank.
Caroline Anstey, managing director of the World Bank, says that while “the North no longer offers the model for development, it’s much more about South to South”. It is also the case that: “It’s still a volatile world and it’s a world in which we have to live with expectations of volatility.”
Ms Anstey adds: “It’s not as if the needs are any less. For an institution like us, there’s still a need to focus on prosperity and poverty reduction.”
But even if the principal raison d'être for the global development banks has not been diminished, emerging market countries are demanding big shifts in governance – and a much bigger say in how development finance is carried out.