Escape from The World Bank

In this article on Project Syndicate, Professor Devash Kapur says The World Bank is getting a needed challenge from the new BRICS oriented financial institutions. Below are a few quotes. 

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"The elephants in the room at the annual International Monetary Fund/World Bank meeting in Lima, Peru, were the China-inspired Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank (AIIB) and New Development Bank (or “BRICS Development Bank,” as it was originally called). Will these new institutions behave like the World Bank or the more conventionally “bank-like” European Investment Bank (EIB)? Above all, will they be vehicles to promote – or, paradoxically, constrain – China’s interests?

The reality is that over the next decade, these new institutions will not be huge lenders. The paid-in capital of each is $10 billion; so, even with an equity-to-loan ratio of 20% (the current floor for the World Bank), each will be able to lend only about $50 billion over the next decade – not chump change, but hardly a game changer – unless they “crowd in” substantial private investment. What matters is that the larger emerging markets are putting substantial capital into institutions that will be dominated by China – an indication of how frustrated they are with the World Bank and the IMF.

The World Bank is like an old ship: in its seven decades, all kinds of barnacles – sticky budgetary accretions and transaction costs – have accumulated on its hull, steadily impeding its speed and performance."  . . . . . . . . . 

Click here to read the full article on Project Syndicate