Make Aid Work Better – World Bank

Make Aid Work Better – World Bank

Washington, November 27, 2011 - The World Bank, a champion of aid effectiveness, will be joining over 2,000 delegates in Busan, South Korea, this week to push the global agenda on making aid work better in the changing development landscape.

The Bank was a major player in previous High Level Forum on Aid Effectiveness in Rome (2003), Paris (2005), and Accra (2008) and brings this experience to the 4th High Level Forum (HLF-4) in Busan from November 29 to December 1. The discussions in Busan will center on the role of emerging powers as development partners and examining the array of funding options and partnerships now available to help the poor.

“We need to rethink development aid,” said Sri Mulyani Indrawati, Managing Director of the World Bank who will be leading the Bank’s delegation to HLF-4. “In a world where developed economies are fueling a prolonged crisis and developing countries are generating two-thirds of global growth, the traditional aid relationship of donors and recipients is simply obsolete.”

Indrawati says that as development professionals gather in Busan to discuss how aid can be made more effective, they should keep three key principles in mind.

• First, the more countries develop, the more they are willing and able to take charge of their future – and the less desire they have to be told what is best for them.
• Second, with the number of donors and partners increasing, we need to ensure that our efforts are coordinated, and that we harness the know-how and fresh insights that newcomers bring to the table.
• Third, that transparency and accountability are critical to long-term success.

The Bank has been a global leader and an advocate for aid effectiveness. Its good performance in organizational and operational efficiency has been recognized by other institutions. The Bank has met or surpassed many of the targets set in Paris, as seen from the most recent Paris Declaration Monitoring Survey.

A UK-based civil society group, Publish What You Fund rated the Bank as “best performer” in terms of aid transparency and ranked the institution #1 out of 58 donors in the 2011 pilot Aid Transparency Index. The Quality of Official Development Assistance (QuODA) Assessment sponsored by the Brookings Institution and the Center for Global Development also ranked the World Bank’s International Development Assistance (IDA) as the top donor in transparency and learning category. IDA was also among the top three of 31 donors ranked in the top ten in all four dimensionsmaximizing efficiency, reducing burden, fostering institutions, transparency and learning.

Three World Bank Vice Presidents VP of Operations Policy and Country Services (OPCS) Joachim von Amsberg; VP of Concessional Finance and Global Partnership Axel van Trotsenberg; and VP of the World Bank Institute Sanjay Pradhan will also be joining the Busan discussions on new approaches to development that have emerged since the Paris Declaration was formed.

Drawing on its ongoing work on aid effectiveness, the Bank hopes to bring to the Forum its expertise in the following three areas: 1) promoting country leadership and ownership in charting their own development paths; 2) developing partnerships beyond aid such as the South-South Experience Exchange facility where the Bank acts as a global knowledge broker to help developing countries share their expertise among themselves; and 3) improving transparency and results at the country level.

For more information, please visit: www.worldbank.org/aideffectiveness

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