Project Syndicate — The World Bank should be a major vehicle for crisis response, post-conflict reconstruction, and, most importantly, for supporting the huge investments necessary for sustainable and healthy global development. To realize this potential, those attending the Bank’s meeting this week need to step up and do the right thing.
Outside of the security domain, overhauling the World Bank offers US President Joe Biden’s administration its greatest opportunity for a key foreign-policy achievement. The World Bank should be a major vehicle for crisis response, post-conflict reconstruction, and, most importantly, for supporting the huge investments necessary for sustainable and healthy global development. But currently it is not.
The remarkable feature of the World Bank’s financial model is that even before it is reformed, which is very necessary, and even without considering its ability to mobilize private-sector finance, each $1 of appropriated funds from the United States catalyzes a permanent increase in lending of more than $15 dollars. (This is because other countries contribute to the Bank as well, and paid-in capital is leveraged many times over.)