Ideas to Action:
Independent research for global prosperity
COVID-19 has highlighted the ways that global public goods play an increasingly important role in the world, in both negative and positive ways. It’s increasingly clear that many of the biggest challenges nations face—and the solutions—won’t be restricted to one nation’s borders. The need for regional or global cooperation has never been greater.
Imagine the young George Washington said, “I cannot tell a lie. I did not cut down the cherry tree,” then added sotto voce, “’twas the hatchet that did it.” Multilateral development banks (MDBs) and development finance institutions are dissembling in the other direction when it comes to their impact—not unreasonably shifting blame but implausibly taking credit.
You might find this question odd. After all, since the outbreak of COVID-19, the development finance institutions DFIs have been busy announcing financial goals for crisis response, and offering reassurances of proactive stances. But it is important to recall at this moment that their financial models are not well suited for the purpose of crisis response. In this blog we explore their challenges and suggest how they can stretch and deploy their capital effectively at this moment of global crisis.
Is the crisis a signal on how devastating the great problems confronting our future could be in a world that is not prepared for them, in particular to face challenges such as major inequalities, the climate emergency, and the loss of nature. The way in which our world produces and consumes, calls for a recovery that would also imply a structural transformation towards a more inclusive and sustainable economic model. DBs could be a great contributor to such a transformation.
In retrospect, the scale up in MDB financing during the 2008-2010 crisis, though significant, now looks conservative as we consider the potential scale of damage from the current COVID-19 pandemic. To put the question bluntly, if the human and economic devastation follows a worst-case scenario, just how much could the MDBs do to respond? We attempt to answer that question by assessing the legal, rather than prudential, constraints on MDB lending.
It is now only a question of when, not if, the COVID-19 pandemic will exact its human and economic toll on the poor and developing countries of South Asia, Africa, and Latin America the way it is already ravaging East Asia, Europe, and North America. And when it does, they too will need to respond with exceptional heath and financial measures in the face of this unprecedented global challenge.
Debt relief for low-income countries is on the table of measures to consider for coronavirus response. The imperative right now is to get cash to LICs as quickly as possible. Suspending some debt service payments may be a good first step in freeing up some budget space for new spending. Beyond that, protracted debt-relief negotiations with multilateral and commercial creditors right now could be a distraction at best but could also actively undermine the ability of institutions like the World Bank to offer new financing for crisis response.
As markets respond to COVID-19, it looks increasingly likely that the IMF and multilateral development bank system will need to provide coordinated countercyclical support around the world.
This week, World Bank president David Malpass took the unusual step of calling out the bank’s peer institutions, the Asian Development Bank (ADB) and African Development Bank, for lending irresponsibly into unsustainable debt environments.
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