It was a potentially awkward moment handled with aplomb. Takehiko Nakao, a senior Japanese finance ministry official and the sole candidate to become the next president of the Asian Development Bank, was addressing a conference today at Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies on G-20 post-crisis policy reforms.
The World Bank just wrapped up a public consultation on the Doing Business report as part of a closely-watched independent review of the report led by Trevor Manuel.
I’ll tell you what I think about Doing Business, but first I need to let you in on a little secret about policymakers. Here it is: you need to keep it simple for them.
This week Senate appropriators failed to include an OK for an International Monetary Fund quota increase in the Senate version of the continuing resolution—the spending bill to keep open the US government for the remaining six months of the fiscal year 2013. The administration had requested Senate appropriators approve a transfer of previous US commitments from one IMF account to another -- a transfer involving virtually no cost for US taxpayers.
Morris, a newly arrived CGD visiting policy fellow, was previously the deputy assistant secretary for development finance and debt at the U.S. Treasury Department, where he led US engagement with the multilateral development banks.
This is a joint post with Stephanie Majerowicz
World Bank presidents have often defined their success in part via ever-larger replenishments for IDA, the Bank’s soft loan window. But at his first ever Bank-Fund annual meetings this weekend in Tokyo, Jim Yong Kim should explain to the gathered illuminati why this is no longer an appropriate metric.
Related Podcast
The Future of IDA
After 52 years, IDA is facing a watershed moment. Drastic changes in both the supply and demand for the World Bank’s cheap long-term loans to governments of poor countries requires rethinking IDA’s purpose, tools, and broad role. In Tokyo, Kim should be sure that shareholders understand that the future of IDA depends, not on its size, but on adapting its mandate and business model to certain new realities:
Last week our CGD and Peterson Institute colleague Arvind Subramanian called on the IMF to speak truth to power, in an elegant cri de coeur in the Financial Times. The IMF, he notes: “has not provided independent intellectual leadership, most evidently on the eurozone crisis. And it is unprepared to provide stability for the next big global crisis.”
The UK International Development Secretary, Andrew Mitchell, announced yesterday that DFID has a new open access policy, which will require all researchers receiving DFID funding to make their findings available for free online.
World Bank president Jim Kim delivered a speech and responded to questions today at Brookings in his first public event since taking the helm at the world’s top development organization on July 1. He struck me as thoughtful, well-informed, articulate and dedicated to multilateralism and the bank’s mission of reducing global poverty. You can see his speech and the Q&A here.
Last month, two major international conferences were convened – the G-20 in Los Cabos on food security and sustainable development and the Rio +20 conference on the environment and more. Lawrence MacDonald contrasted the two meetings in his blog, pointing out that in both cases “much of the action is on the sidelines.” And he’s right.
IMF managing director Christine Lagarde announced at a CGD event on Tuesday that the IMF would provide research and analytic support in three areas crucial to sustainable development: carbon pricing, phasing out fossil fuel subsidies and green national accounting, that is, development of new measures of economic progress that take into account environmental costs and benefits not included in Gross Domestic Product (GDP).