World Bank President Jim Yong Kim speaks with a local expert of the bank’s project in India. The financial institution wants to move away from lowest price as the single criteria in procurement. Photo by: Graham Crouch / World Bank / CC BY-NC-ND
As the World Bank moves ahead with President Jim Kim’s ambitious reform agenda, the bank’s procurement team is working to articulate specific policies to move away from simple cost considerations towards a broader definition of “value for money” — a term creating buzz among the development community.
The change has been a high priority for contractors and vendors that do business with the Washington, D.C.-based institution, who see the bank’s current policies as biased towards low-priced bidders to the detriment of quality and other non-price factors.