ANNEX
1: SUMMARY
RECORD
OF
MEETINGS
WITH
THE
WORLD
BANK'S
SENIOR
MANAGEMENT
MEETING WITH
ROBERT ZOELLICK,
PRESIDENT OF
THE WORLD
BANK, 28 NOVEMBER
2007
Vision: President Zoellick said that in some ways
the idea of the World Bank as a bank was misleading. It was an
institution which needed to: apply the knowledge it already had
effectively; leverage its impact through markets and other institutions;
and ensure the best use of money available to it to achieve the
desired development outcomes.
Relations with parliaments: Zoellick welcomed the
Committee's engagement with the Bank. In the context of the Bank's
broader legitimacy, Zoellick said that he was keen to do more
with parliaments. The Parliamentary Network of the World Bank
(PNoWB) offered one avenue. Zoellick was looking at ways of supporting
PNoWB without undermining its independence. In borrower countries,
parliaments played an important role in supporting transparent
systems.
UK influence: Zoellick said that the UK had a very
strong influence at the Bank. This was due not just to the financial
commitments but to a willingness to engage with the Bank intellectually
both on the ground and in Washington. The UK delegation in Washington
were influential both with other delegations and with World Bank
staff. Zoellick said that if he were to have to pick delegations
with institutional influence, beyond their voting weights, the
UK would be at the top of the list. DFID had both bilateral global
reach and could leverage the multilaterals to complement that
reach. While Zoellick said that he was not competent to comment
on whether the UK needed a full-time Executive Director at the
Bank, he said that he saw there was benefit in taking an integrated
approach to World Bank/IMF issues.
Conditionality: The current direction of the World
Bank on the issue of conditionality was to build on what both
common sense and experience had shown: that development does not
work without borrower country buy-in. The default position today
was that conditions were developed in tandem with developing countries
and often at their behest to support domestic reforms, as with
the case of anti-corruption conditions in Indonesia. Conditions
had a particular bridging role where country systems were not
yet sufficiently robust. But the old, perceived model of Bank-imposed
conditions had given way to conditions which emerged from dialogue.
Poverty and Social Impact Analysis (PSIA): PSIAs
were developed for most of the development projects. For investment
projects it depended on the nature of the project. Zoellick wished
to support a greater role for local governance institutions in
this process in order to build their capacity and support in-country
networks.
Climate change: Zoellick recognised the potential
tension between maintaining the Bank's focus on overcoming poverty
and its emerging remit in climate change. Borrower nations had
raised concerns with him that funds currently committed to poverty
could be diverted to tackle climate change or that growth rates
could be constrained by pressure to address climate-related issues.
The forthcoming Bali meeting presented an opportunity to launch
a dialogue with developing countries. Much attention had been
given to mitigation but Zoellick thought that adaptation would
need to be addressed more intensively. The Bank's role here was
to: draw attention to the role of developing countries in this
work; come up with innovative and concessional financing options;
support the evolution of effective carbon markets; ensure that
technological advances were spread to the developing world; facilitate
appropriate private investment, including through the International
Finance Corporation; and develop knowledge and best practice.
If the Bank were able to do all of these it would be in a position
to inform and support the international negotiations to develop
a climate change regime. The right financing architecture would
be important. Zoellick was coordinating with Global Environment
Facility senior management on the need for a framework which could
integrate or coordinate the proliferation of funds in this area.
Fragile states: Zoellick said that developing thinking
and analysis in this area was a priority. So far the analytical
work had been modest. He wished to draw together the thinking
of key intellectuals, such as Paul Collier, and institutions,
such as NATO and RAND Corporation.
Middle and low income countries: The Bank's model
for engagement with middle income countries was evolving. In
reality, many middle income countries came to the Bank for knowledge
transfer rather than lending. Loans were in essence simply a way
of compensating the Bank for this expertise and tying the Bank
closely to the loan outcomes.
Expanding the donor base for IDA: Zoellick said that
it was important to bring IDA graduates into IDA as donors, not
only for the financial contribution but also better to demonstrate
their stake in the Bank across the board. China's attendance at
the Dublin IDA meeting had been welcome. Some Gulf states were
likely to increase their contributions in IDA 15. This reflected
in part the priority President Zoellick had given to increased
engagement with the Arab world—a priority welcomed by many
oil rich countries who were aware of their own social development
problems.
MEETING WITH
KATHERINE SIERRA,
VICE PRESIDENT
FOR SUSTAINABLE
DEVELOPMENT AND
INFRASTRUCTURE, AND
JEFF GUTMAN,
VICE PRESIDENT
FOR OPERATIONS
POLICY AND
COUNTRY SERVICES,
WORLD BANK,
27 NOVEMBER 2007
Vice-President Sierra said that the World Bank had
been working for the last two years to up its game on climate
change. There had been a major push post-Gleneagles, which DFID
had helped to galvanise. DFID's vision of how to manage the issue
had informed World Bank thinking. In these two years, much of
the groundwork had been done and studies had been completed to
see what the costs were and what the framework might look like.
Mitigation had been a key focus of the Bank's work, but on adaptation
Sierra wished to work beyond energy and power sectors to a broad-based
adaptation strategy. There was also significant work to be done
on financing: the GEF and current carbon financing arrangement
would contribute but much larger total sums would be needed before
any new arrangements took effect in 2012 and the Bank would need
to help address that gap.
Vice-President Gutman said that the issue of fragile
states was not one the Bank could tackle alone—partnership,
harmonisation and alignment were key in this context. The Bank
and others needed the capability to act and move quickly in response
to developments in these countries, particularly in post-conflict
situations. Presence on the ground was key but there were staffing
challenges and the Bank was looking at incentives and culture-change
to ensure that it could decentralise effectively in these situations.
MEETING WITH
OBIAGELI EZEKWESILI,
VICE PRESIDENT
FOR AFRICA,
WORLD BANK,
28 NOVEMBER 2007
Vice-President Ezekwesili said that while development
in Africa had not worked across the board, a third of countries
had seen significant growth of around 5.5% in recent years. There
was still work to be done in mineral rich countries to break the
cycle of resources being a cost not a benefit to their economies.
There were also countries where growth had been so slow that it
had been below the rate of population growth.
The World Bank had not always done well on agriculture
but there was re-structuring work underway and the Bank had focused
on this sector, not least because studies showed that the impact
on poverty of growth in agriculture was four times greater than
that of growth in other areas. The problem had not been a lack
of skills within the World Bank but simply a question of budget
allocation. A focus was now being brought, however, to areas such
as regulatory reform, technology, infrastructure (including irrigation),
the subsistence agenda, and natural resource management. Many
borrower countries were using as little as 4% of their national
budget on agriculture and World Bank expertise could help to scale
up support in this sector.
Post-Gleneagles, there needed to be a substantial
effort to show how resources had an impact in Africa. At the
strategic level, clearer frameworks were needed for what the Bank
was trying to achieve and, at the project level, numbers needed
to be put on the results and these needed to be published for
transparency. There were some gaps in that data but these too
needed to be made public.
The Bank's senior management realised that there
was a clear need for decentralisation of staff from Washington
to Africa. The window for reform was not always open and so staff
were needed on the ground to be able to respond more quickly and
appropriately to country priorities. Reforms, after all, could
only succeed with recipient country buy-in.
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