Press Center

From the article: « Le processus qui s’ouvre s’annonce tumultueux compte tenu des prises de position de Donald Trump », prédit Scott Morris, du Center for Global Development, un think tank de Washington. « Une question-clé sera de savoir jusqu’à quel point tiendra l’accord mutuel qui a poussé jusqu’ici les Etats-Unis et l’Europe à se soutenir l’un l’autre, poursuit cet expert, chargé des relations du Trésor avec la BM sous Barack Obama. Mais il ne faut pas oublier que les Etats-Unis conservent un avantage-clé en tant que premier actionnaire de la banque. »

From the article: But that was then. With Donald Trump in the Oval Office, a more aggressive movement to overturn five decades of U.S. domination is underway. “The U.S shouldn’t get to pick the head of the World Bank. And not just because Trump is president,” said a Slate commentary by Charles Kenny, senior fellow at the Center for Global Development. Media reports warn that Kim’s departure, three years before the end of his term, “tees up a battle between the Trump administration… and critics seeking to break the U.S. stranglehold” on the bank’s presidency. Maybe the critics of U.S. domination should be granted their wish. Ending U.S. domination of the bank’s hierarchy could be exactly the kind of reform it needs.

From the article: Most World Bank lending to China aligns with the bank’s existing policy on how it lends to wealthier countries — but some lending doesn’t, according to a new report from the Center for Global Development. The report, released Thursday, examines how lending to China fits into the bank’s framework for engaging with graduation eligible countries, which was adopted as part of the capital increase process last year. The 2018 agreement limits the share the International Bank for Reconstruction and Development can allocate to countries that are above the graduation threshold, adjusted the pricing on lending to those countries, and laid out principles for how IBRD should engage in those countries. -- China’s borrowing from the World Bank was a key point of discussion ahead of last year’s capital increase and a source of tension between the United States and the World Bank. But whether and how much China should continue borrowing does not have a straightforward answer, said Scott Morris, one of the report’s authors and a senior fellow and director of the US Development Policy Initiative at the Center for Global Development. -- There have also been questions about why China, which can get financing elsewhere on similar terms and is a big donor itself, would turn to the World Bank. China is likely motivated by the services, technical expertise, and policy dialogue that comes with the loans, Morris said, adding that the report is meant to inform the policy debate about China and graduation from World Bank lending. “What we found in taking a close look at the portfolio is broadly reassuring,” Morris said of the fact that China continues to borrow under thematic constraints. But there are some areas that don’t seem to fit the standards or lending to higher income borrowers, per the agreement that accompanied last year’s capital increase, he noted. -- “If IBRD lending were designed to be strictly focused on the poorer provinces as a path toward graduation, then actual lending appears to have fallen well short,” the report states. About 44 percent of the lending to China is related to global public goods — particularly climate mitigation — or designated strictly as capacity building, according to the report, which said that this “suggests weak alignment with the 2018 principles.” A broader interpretation of capacity building, including an analysis of the lending to the poorest provinces that need more assistance, paints a more favorable picture of the alignment, Morris said. “As we assessed the whole portfolio, big buckets made sense, but there were gaps — projects not supporting western China or to low-income provinces. A tighter country strategy would not allow [those] investments to get through,” he said. To help ensure that there are not projects that do not align, the report suggests that the World Bank do a better job of labeling projects and establish a clear framework for evaluating loans to ensure that they fit with the bank’s policy objectives. While the new policy should guide decision-making and investment decisions should be evaluated based on those guidelines, but Morris said that major new procedures likely aren’t necessary.