World Bank President Robert Zoellick said June 24 the organization is preparing a mechanism to provide more financial aid for poor countries in addition to the ISD 1.2 billion in funds against global food crisis. ?We are talking with other countries to build a multilateral fund,? Zoellick told the first America-Caribbean Finance Ministerial meeting in Mexico’s Cancun. ?I have just come back from Russia, which is very (likely) to support us. Now we are going to talk with other organizations to achieve it,?? he added. ?The World Bank said it plans to create a new trust to provide poor countries with funds for purchasing food staples and weather the effects of soaring crude prices. Pamela Cox, Vice President for Latin America and the Caribbean, said the international agency is asking several countries to pitch in for the new fund but she did not detail the size of the program.
The World Bank is moving ahead with plans to use the weather derivative market as part of a comprehensive strategy to reduce the impact of drought in developing countries. Under a proposal approved recently by its Board of Directors, the World Bank will now offer financial intermediation services to low-income client countries of the International Development Association (IDA), and will add to the range of risk-management tools available to middle-income client countries of the International Bank for Reconstruction and Development (IBRD). Malawi is expected to be the first country to take advantage of this new financial product offering from the World Bank.
The World Bank, France and other donors have pledged a total of USD 1.4 billion to development projects, including hydropower dams and irrigation along West Africa’s Niger River, a regional organization said. Donors committed funds at a conference in Niger’s capital Niamey on Monday organized by the Niger Basin Authority, a nine-country body that promotes development of the eponymous river running through one of the world’s poorest regions. The June 23 conference secured pledges including USD 500 million from the World Bank; USD 380 million from France; USD 102 million from the West African Development Bank, USD 146 million from the African Development Bank, and USD 100 million from the Islamic Development Bank.
This year?s updated version of the Worldwide Governance Indicators (WGI) compiled by World Bank researchers shows many developing country governments making important gains in control of corruption, and some of them matching rich country performance in overall governance measures. ?Some countries are making rapid progress in governance, including in Africa, showing that a measure of ?Afro-optimism? is called for?, said Daniel Kaufmann, co-author of the report and Director of Governance at the World Bank Institute, while acknowledging that the data also shows large variation in performance across countries, and even among neighbors within each continent. This year?s study is the seventh update of the WGI, a decade-long effort by the researchers to build and update the most comprehensive cross-country set of governance indicators currently available. The newly released set of the six updated aggregate indicators, as well as data from the underlying sources, are at www.govindicators.org.
Four new projects approved June 24 by the World Bank?s Board of Executive Directors has brought the organization?s support for innovative development projects in China in the 2008 fiscal year (June 30, 2007 ? June 30, 2008) to a total of USD1.513 million. ?These four projects are excellent examples of how the World Bank can help China with its environmental and social challenges,? said David Dollar, World Bank Country Director for China. ?They all pilot new approaches or new technologies that, if successful, can be scaled up and make a large contribution to the quality of life and sustainability of development.?
The World Bank Board of Executive Directors June 24 approved a USD 15 million equivalent operation to finance a Transparency and Accountability Capacity Development project (TACD) in Cameroon. The financing package which is an International Development Association (IDA) credit is designed to assist the Government of Cameroon (GoC) to lay solid foundations for a transition to increased budgetary assistance, through strengthening Public Financial Management (PFM). Many challenges are still ahead for Cameroon to improve the PFM efficiency and transparency and therefore enhance economic growth prospects and reduce poverty.
