|
Agencies of the World Bank
Yesterday the World Bank celebrated 40 years of its operations in Malawi. It opened its office here in 1966 and since then the Bank has pumped into the country about K349.3 billion (US$2.495 billion) since 1966.
The World Bank has been assisting Malawi since October 1966 in areas of agriculture, education, infrastructure, private sector development, drought emergency support, environmental management, health, HIV and Aids and economic management, among others.
The anniversary could not have come at aright time than 2006 when the World Bank and its fellow Bretton Woods institution—the International Monetary Fund (IMF)—cancelled over 90 percent of the foreign debt Malawi owed lenders.
The last time I ‘unpacked’ the World Bank I concentrated on its objectives and differences with the IMF. For the benefit of those who missed the said articles, the World Bank and IMF have different roles despite both being set up by the Bretton Woods conference in 1944.
Briefly, the IMF’s role is to stabilise the international monetary system and monitor world currencies while the World Bank supports governments of member countries in their efforts to invest in schools, hospitals, provide water and electricity, fight disease and protect the environment.
The World Bank has five agencies: The International Bank for Reconstruction and Development (IBRD), the International Development Association (IDA), the International Finance Corporation (IFC), the Multilateral Investment Guarantee Agency (MIGA) and the International Centre for the Settlement of Investment Disputes (ICSID).
Courtesy of the handbook on the World Bank Group made available by Zeria Banda from the World Bank Malawi Office, I will briefly outline roles of each agency.
IBRD provides loans and development assistance to middle-income countries in Asia, Africa, Latin America and Eastern Europe. It raises its money by selling bonds.
Of all the agencies, the IDA is probably the most popular as it was widely associated with the construction of most modern primary and secondary schools in the country in the 1980s. IDA support focuses on the poorest countries like Malawi where it provides interest-free loans. It depends on contributions from rich countries.
IFC, on the other hand, promotes growth in the developing world by financing private sector investments and providing technical support to governments and businesses while MIGA encourages foreign investment in developing countries by providing guarantees to foreign investors against loss caused by non-commercial risks.
Finally, ICSID provides facilities for settling investment disputes between foreign investors and their host countries. In other words, this is a court, some sort of international court.
—Feedback: amchulu@yahoo.co.uk
|
