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Welcome to the Center for Global Development's Press Center!
The Center for Global Development’s communications team is standing by to assist reporters on deadline. Our experts can provide analysis, commentary, data, and unique expertise on the global development and economic issues that are driving the news cycle. You can search for experts by their area of expertise here. To arrange an interview or to be added to our press list, please contact Holly Shulman, Communications Director, by phone or email at +1202.416.4040 and hshulman@cgdev.org.
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CGD in the News
February 14, 2019
Article
From the article:
We want a proper contest
You are right that Donald Trump could have picked a less-qualified American than David Malpass to lead the World Bank, but you are wrong in thinking that the rest of the world should sigh with relief, hold its nose and accept him (“A qualified pass”, February 9th). Nominations for the job are open for another month. Until then, the shareholders, and The Economist, should keep an open mind. When all the candidates are known, the bank’s board can assess them against the qualifications it has agreed on, which does not include being the candidate nominated by America.
In the 21st century the World Bank will have a useful future only if it can evolve into a club of countries with the resources and legitimacy to tackle a growing list of shared challenges such as climate change, financial instability, the refugee crisis, pandemics and boosting investment to build prosperity. The informal bargain that lets America decide who should lead the bank was an anachronism even when it was struck more than 70 years ago. It should now be consigned to history, especially as the bank no longer depends on American financing. The Europeans may worry that they will therefore lose the right to nominate the head of the imf: good. Both institutions deserve better.
Owen Barder
Centre for Global Development
London
February 14, 2019
Article
From the article:
Bangladesh stands to become the worst-hit less developed countries (LDCs) in a "no-deal" March 29 Brexit outcome. That calculation, made by the Centre for Global Development (CGD), is built upon the European Union's "everything-but-arms" (EBA) trading scheme evaporating for Britain: unless Britain recreates its own LDC trade agreements, with LDC concessions, LDC losses would be staggering. Yet building them involves lengthy negotiations.
Up to 49 LDC exporters to the European Union (EU) receive duty-free and quota-free privileges for almost every product shipped. Since almost two-thirds of Bangladesh's RMG (ready-made garments) exports go to Europe, without Great Britain's (GB's) EBA benefits, Bangladesh stands to lose $4.0 billion, according to the CGD forecast. For a country borrowing heavily and relying increasingly on exports and remittances to pay for its ambitious (but critically needed) infrastructural megaprojects, that matters. With a Brexit deal, Bangladesh would remain largely unaffected.
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February 13, 2019
Article
From the article:
First daughter Ivanka Trump wants to help 50 million women around the world "realize their economic potential" by 2025.
Experts who work with women's issues in the global development community are hopeful about the new initiative – but raise questions about the timing of the announcement and the lack of specifics.
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Nancy Lee, a senior fellow at the Center for Global Development and a former U.S. Treasury official, says the initiative could be truly transformative if it actually brings women's issues to the forefront of all development efforts – whether that means including women in the efforts of farmers to bring food to market or inviting them to be leaders in a peace-building efforts.
February 12, 2019
Article
From the article:
The World Bank's mission is to lift countries out of extreme poverty. Few would say China fits that description these days. It's technically eligible for World Bank loans. But as NPR's Jason Beaubien reports, some people question whether China really needs the money.
JASON BEAUBIEN, BYLINE: China has cash reserves of some $3 trillion, yet continues to borrow significant amounts of money each year from the World Bank. Under the bank's rules, once a nation's per capita income tops $7,000, they're supposed to get weaned off the World Bank's subsidized loans. China passed that threshold in 2016.
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BEAUBIEN: The World Bank has specific issues that it's trying to influence globally, and one of them is climate change.
SCOTT MORRIS: China's the world's largest polluter today, and the biggest single category of expenditures for the World Bank is in this area.
BEAUBIEN: That's Scott Morris, a senior fellow at the Center for Global Development and the lead author of a new report on World Bank lending to China. He found that 38 percent of loans to China over the last three years were focused on what the bank calls global public goods, issues that extend beyond China's borders such as climate change, smokestack emissions and other industrial pollution. The fear is that if the World Bank disengages, China will scale back some of these environmental efforts. Morris says China recently has also turned to the bank for money for a wide range of projects involving education, agriculture and roads. It borrowed $200 million for a port and shipping container logistics park on the Yangtze River. There was even a loan to support heritage-based sustainable tourism.
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February 12, 2019
Article
From the article:
This week’s brief summarizes several reports and analyses on policy coherence and interlinkages across the SDG framework in Europe, Asia and Latin America. We also review thought leadership on other forms of means of implementation in Europe, focusing on the EU’s financial architecture and external investment.
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The Center for Global Development published a policy paper titled, ‘The EU’s Financial Architecture for External Investment: Progress, Challenges, and Options.’ The authors describe the evolution of the European financial architecture, including blending strategies, guarantees, the External Investment Plan (EIP) launched in 2017, and a proposed investment framework. Noting that the EIP aims to increase the scale, impact and coherence of EU-supported external investment, the paper documents lessons learned during its first year of implementation. The authors call for “greater policy steer to investors;” increasing competition among institutions for investment support; setting clear guidance and fee structures; and standardizing contractual terms, among other recommendations.
February 12, 2019
Article
From the article:
During his time in office, President Trump has named a climate-change skeptic and an energy lobbyist as the heads of the Environmental Protection Agency, a foreclosure profiteer to head the Treasury, a low-wage employer to run the Labor Department, and a critic of public schools to manage the Department of Education. His Energy Secretary once argued that the department should be abolished, and his one-time leader of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau has argued that the bureau should not exist.
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Nor does Malpass represent a strong or reassuring policy vision for the world’s most important anti-poverty institution. “I care deeply about the mission and about breaking out of poverty and achieving growth, and I am sure the World Bank can succeed,” Malpass assured reporters last week, as reported by the Wall Street Journal. But in Congressional testimony, he said institutions like the bank are “not very efficient,” and are “often corrupt in their lending practices and they don’t get the benefit to the actual people in the countries.” He has argued that the institution should do less and be less, and looks likely to nudge it to do less and be less.
As a result, development experts and global economists have broadly criticized the pick. “I frankly view him as a bad candidate,” said Scott Morris of the Center on Global Development, the influential Washington think tank. “He has a track record, both in views that he’s expressed and policy as [Treasury] undersecretary, which is pretty clearly hostile to ambition in the World Bank.”
February 11, 2019
Article
From the article:
As the United Kingdom (UK) heads towards a possible “no deal” Brexit, the uncertainty surrounding the terms of the UK’s imminent departure from the European Union (EU) is making waves as far away as Southeast Asia.
The German Development Institute, a think tank, recently estimated in a report that Cambodia could be one of the world’s biggest losers in the event of a “no-deal” Brexit. As many as 1.7 million people living in developing nations could descend into “extreme poverty” in the event, the think tank claimed.
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According to a recent report by the Centre for Global Development (CGD), a think tank, the “best-case scenario” for developing nations is that the UK quickly amends its existing cross-border legislation before March 29 so that its tariffs and duties for poorer nations simply replicate those of the EU’s preferential trade deals, like the EBA scheme.
This is not too difficult, the report states, but as “Brexit congests the parliamentary business schedule severely” politicians might not find the necessary time to make these changes. “Under this worst-case scenario, following no-deal, developing countries would lose all preferential access to the UK and face much higher…tariff rates,” it added.
Yet the stark question is whether trade with the world’s poorest nations, including Cambodia, is actually high on the list of the UK government’s priories right now – or even on that list. In 2016, the UK’s bilateral trade with Southeast Asia was worth around $41.8 billion. Around 68% of that trade was done with just three countries: Singapore (36.1%), Thailand (17.1%) and Vietnam (14.9%). Trade with Cambodia might be important for Phnom Penh, but its negligible for London.
February 8, 2019
Article
From the article:
In the barely-inhabited steppes of Central Asia, China is establishing the centre of its campaign to dominate the global economy, writes Ben Mauk
The Eurasian Pole of Inaccessibility is the point farthest from a sea or ocean on the planet.
Located in China just east of the border with Kazakhstan, the pole gets you at least 2,500km from the nearest coastline into an expanse of white steppe and blue-beige mountain that is among the least populated places on earth.
Here, among some of the last surviving pastoral nomads in Central Asia, the largest infrastructure project in the history of the world is growing.
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Critics have described the BRI as a new kind of colonialism or even part of a strategy of “debt-trap diplomacy,” seducing cash-poor countries with infrastructure projects that are unlikely to generate enough revenue to cover the interest on the loans that funded them.
That is the unhappy situation at the China-funded port of Hambantota in Sri Lanka, which the China Harbour Engineering Company took over after Sri Lanka fell behind on debt service.
The Center for Global Development lists eight countries that face high risk of “debt distress” from BRI projects that they can’t afford. Some experts view the camps and other security measures in Xinjiang as partly a reaction to the increased freight traffic now moving across the region.
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