World Bank should transform into ‘better, bigger and more effective’: FM

Sitharaman encouraged the World Bank to take lead in aligning processes and procedures with other MDBs to benefit client countries.

India's Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman said on October 12 that the World Bank should transform into ‘Better, Bigger and more Effective Bank’ and align with other multilateral development banks (MDBs) to remain relevant during these challenging circumstances of geopolitical tensions and headwinds to economic growth.

“The headwinds to global economic growth, exacerbated by multiple and overlapping crises of recent years, and increasing geo-political tensions, threaten the achievement of the 2030 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). These are indeed testing times for multilateralism and there is a pressing need to reimagine multilateral institutions so that they remain relevant, capable and effective to address the challenging circumstances with speed and scale,” Sitharaman said.

“Therefore, the significance of our collective efforts towards transforming the World Bank into a ‘Better, Bigger and more Effective Bank’ can hardly be overemphasised,” she added.

The finance minister was speaking at the 108th Meeting of the Development Committee Plenary of the World Bank in Morocco.

Sitharaman encouraged the World Bank to take lead in aligning processes and procedures with other MDBs to benefit client countries.

“We look forward to the finalisation of the new World Bank Scorecard to drive impactful action at scale with a focus on measurable outcomes and results aligned with the new vision and mission. While doing so, we should acknowledge that there is an increasing feeling that the implementation of World Bank-financed projects have become slow, cumbersome and expensive for client countries. This situation needs urgent addressing, for ensuring continued leadership and relevance of the World Bank Group in the development space,” she said.

The efficiency and effectiveness of World Bank operations can be substantially improved through simplification and alignment of processes and procedures across the Bank Group with increased delegation of authority, especially to country offices. This will also reduce the transaction and compliance costs for client countries, the minister suggested.

Sitharaman said that though there is tremendous value in the World Bank’s knowledge proposition, there is a tendency to mainly work with knowledge and research institutions of the Global North.

“We suggest that knowledge institutions of the Global South be actively involved in the Bank’s knowledge products and verticals. This will add value to the knowledge compact, in terms of incorporating diverse intellectual perspectives and development experiences, as well as building knowledge ecosystems in client countries.” she said.