(Group Blog of Sesparlu 54 by Agung Cahaya Sumirat, Ferry Akbar Pasaribu, and Priadji)
source pic: http://newsnextbd.com
The World Bank has been playing an important role in financing international development for the last seven decades. Its role as the provider of financial resources as well as expertise on development related matter has positioned the World Bank at the forefront on global efforts in alleviating the world’s development challenges. However, there has been critics which points out that the World Bank is not able to respond to the shifts on the current global economic development. Some quarters have suggested that the World Bank needs organizational reform. So how to reform the World Bank?
New Realities
New middle-income countries, which used to be the World Bank’s clients, now plug their development fund needs through commercial markets, which offers bigger funds and less complicated procedures. Furthermore, the newly established institutions such as think tanks, universities, research centers and others are mushrooming, and they could also provide high quality expertise on addressing development issues.
Domination of developed countries, especially the United States that has veto right over major decisions, seems as a major irk to the new emerging economic powers. Countries such as China, India, Russia, Brazil, and South Africa have voiced concerns for being under-represented to the decision making process at the World Bank. China therefore took the initiative to establish the New Development Bank with Brazil, Russia, India, and South Africa (BRICS) as well the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank (AIIB).
With regard to the increased inequality among countries, the World Bank standing argument is that the economic growth will be able to address it. However, it turned out the other around so far. Also, the World Bank’s argument to expand export has been disastrous for the developing countries, as it led to an overexploitation over their natural resources. In such cases, the World Bank’s role to promote ‘development’ deemed as a failure. These are the push factors why the World Bank should reform itself, if it wants to stay relevant.
The Challenges
Jim Yong Kim, the World Bank President since 2012, realized that he has to launch a substantial reform in order to keep the World Bank relevant towards the current economic shift. The World Bank has to undergo managerial and operational reforms. However, there are some major hurdles that Kim is facing in his efforts to reform the World Bank. First, the World Bank has transformed to become a huge bureaucracy, with more than 16,000 staffs, most of whom are permanent ones. Operational cost is unbearably expensive.
Second, the Bank was structured into 6 regional offices, which caused horizontal coordination amongst those offices to be more difficult. Accordingly, the World Bank’s efforts to encounter the world’s current development issues such as epidemic diseases, climate change, and others need to be divided into regions. At the very end this has been deemed as eroding the Bank’s efficiency in handling the world’s pressing issues.
Third, the World Bank’s executive board and share composition are basically a rigid structure, despite how different the world today in terms of distribution of power and influence in the global economy order. The creation of Group of 20 (G-20), where some new emerging economies such as Brazil, China, India, Indonesia, Mexico, Turkey and South Africa joint the developed ones, is a reflection of new realities in the world. So far those countries are not yet proportionately represented in terms of voting right.
Measures for Reform
There are some identified measures that worth considering to reform the World Bank:
First, the good governance such as voting right has to represent the current global economic order. Some view that the ideal decision making mechanism are by 50-50 representation between developed and developing countries. Also the issue of good transparency in transparency, equitable, and representative are to be addressed. In this regard, the Meltzer’s Report published by the US Congress suggests that the reform emphasizes on leadership and controlling structure.
Second, with regard to the views that the World Bank deemed to favour commercial giants, it is timely that the World Bank makes a shift by focusing more on local economic development of its client countries. Third, the World Bank should narrow the time gap between the period of an eruption of economic crisis in one country and the decision taken to assist the said country. It often happened that the gap was caused by the long negotiation over the conditions that the country in crisis must accept before it got the required financial expertise and support.
Fourth, there are some areas where the developed and the emerging economies agreed upon, namely: 1) focus on the fight against global poverty; 2) simplify the operation process; 3) enhance the technical resilience in responding to short-term global crises and 4) a more assertive World Bank leadership to reshape the international financial system.
In addition to that, for Indonesia, the main issue is on how to improve the social security net and to write off foreign debt. The World Bank should do more on debt reduction/relief since as it serves as drag factor to the developing countries’ economic growth.
Conclusion
Given its good track in providing development assistance to the developing countries at their early stage of development, the World Bank has the modality to continue doing so despite the shifting of the global economies. Therefore, the World Bank has to take immediate measures to cope with this new realities. The new emerging countries need to play more roles commensurate with their economic size.
The World Bank should consider to focus its reform by taking the fourth option, since the majority of its members have had a common ground on the 4 core areas of reform. These measures have to be immediately put in place if the World Bank would to retain its role as a knowledge bank in the world’s development process.
Jakarta, 28 March 2016