Senior fellows Ben Leo and Todd Moss were mentioned in a Financial Times article on partnerships and development.
From the Article
At the Centre for Global Development (CGD), an independent US policy research organisation, Ben Leo and his colleague Todd Moss have studied the client countries of the International Development Association (IDA), the World Bank’s grant and soft-loan arm.
They predict a shift in lending patterns as some of the wealthier recipient countries “graduate” from IDA membership, meaning the countries still eligible for IDA help are smaller, fragile or post-conflict states and mostly in Africa. “The operational implications are huge in terms of staffing for these countries,” says Mr Leo, a senior research fellow at the CGD.
Some of the transformation of the development world is being prompted by the global downturn as aid budgets shrink. “We’re seeing increasing constraints in terms of aid budgets,” says Mr Leo. “That has significant implications for the US and other donor countries in their ability to follow through on commitments they’ve made to multilateral institutions.” This could lead donor countries to give more help to organisations that need less government funding. One example is the Overseas Private Investment Corporation (Opic), a US development agency whose mission is to promote private sector development in overseas markets by fostering US investment into these markets.
“Opic is self-sustaining,” says Mr Leo. “It doesn’t need congressional appropriation – it actually pumps money into the coffers. So it will be sensible for governments to focus on these types of instruments, to enhance them and to build them up on a greater scale.”