Role of banks

The World Bank is an international financial institution that provides loans to developing countries for capital programs. It comprises two institutions: the International Bank for Reconstruction and Development (IBRD), and the International (IDA). The World Bank is a component of the World Bank Group, which is part of the United Nations system. The World Bank's official goal

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1996

OED Working Papers are an informal series to present the findings of work in progress in evaluation or research relating to development effectiveness. They are circulated to encourage discussion and elicit comment. The findings, interpretations, and conclusions expressed in this paper are those of the author(s). They do not necessarily reflect the views of the Board of Directors of the Asian Development Bank or the governments they represent. The Asian Development Bank does not guarantee the accuracy of the data included in this work. The boundaries, colors, denominations, and other information shown on any map in this work do not imply on the part of ADB any judgment of the legal or other status of any territorial entity.

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1981

The World Bank is the most powerful international agency concerned with economic development. It is for this reason that some special aspects of the World Bank’s influence on events in Bangladesh are examined in a wider setting. Its programmes may or may not be greater than those of other aid-givers but the Bank is invariably regarded by its members as being in the position of giving leadership to their activities. This reflects the prestige that it has built up over the years, based on the high quality of the individuals it employs and its vast and specialised resources. Nowhere else in the world is there such a concentration of talent and know-how directed to the business of development. It has the resources to monitor continually the economies of the countries with which it is concerned and to report on them for the benefit of Bank members; it studies each aspect of the economy in depth and it has the technical knowledge of project preparation and lending for development that can...

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Proceedings of the 2019 International Conference on Management, Education Technology and Economics (ICMETE 2019), 2019

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Information technology (IT) is increasingly becoming an invaluable and powerful tool driving development, supporting growth, promoting innovation, and enhancing competitiveness. Emerging information technology offers opportunities for developing nations to leapfrog earlier stages of development. It is also important to note that with an increasingly global environment less limited by time or distance, nations around the world need to get connected and join the global networked community. Otherwise, they may fall further behind and the gap they have with the developed world could get wider. Additionally, there is growing evidence that information technology is becoming an increasingly powerful tool when used as part of an overall development strategy coupled with partnerships between governments, business, and civil society (World Bank, 2003). Information and communication technology coupled with knowledge management hold much potential for propelling the development process (Okpaku, 2003). The vital role information and communication technology is playing is felt across many industries and sectors, affecting both economic development and growth at large in many societies. The resulting implications have had a major role in transforming such sectors and have affected the economic-development process in developing nations. The banking sector is an example in which information-technology infrastructures have had implications on the economic development of many nations in the developing world. It is important to note that the banking industry was one of the very first to utilize information technology back in the 1960s, and has thus a record of influencing the development process through the technology.

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The World Bank was founded to address what we would today call imperfections in international capital markets. Its founders thought that countries would borrow from the Bank temporarily, until they grew enough to borrow commercially (NAC 1946, p. 312; Black 1952). The Bank could arguably address capital market failures if private banks would not lend to truly creditworthy projects in developing countries out of fear that they would not be repaid. In that case, a multilateral institution backed by the world's governments might be able to secure repayment. Some critiques and analyses of the Bank are based on the assumption that this continues to be its role. For example, some argue that the growth of private capital flows to the developing world has rendered the Bank irrelevant. We will argue that modern analyses should proceed from the premise that the Bank's central goal is and should be to reduce extreme poverty, and that addressing failures in global capital markets is now of subsidiary importance. The overwhelming majority of Bank subsidies from its shareholder countries go to the International Development Association (IDA), its arm for making grants and highly concessional loans to the lowest-income countries, and other funding vehicles for the same countries. The Bank's greatest impact comes from its role in the dramatic policy changes many developing countries have undertaken in multiple sectors that most economists would consider likely to reduce poverty, either by increasing growth or promoting equity. The Bank's stated goal is reducing poverty. Why might donor countries choose to work through an international organization to advance the goal of reducing poverty? Developing country government policy is a key factor influencing poverty, with an importance far greater than the direct impact of aid. Effective aid therefore often involves negotiating agreements with recipient country governments that include policy reforms. There are economies of scale in negotiating such agreements that can be realized by an entity such as the Bank, and pooling funds into such an entity may also improve donors' collective bargaining position in negotiations with governments. Moreover, we argue that the World Bank's status as a multilateral organization and its technocratic staff enhances its credibility and legitimacy in policy discussions with developing-country governments. This has allowed it tremendous policy influence relative to the explicit and implicit subsidies it receives, making it a bargain for those who value its mission of reducing extreme poverty and share its mainstream economic views on what policies best advance that goal. Below we discuss what the Bank does: how it spends money, how it influences policy, and how it presents its mission. Based on this, we argue that the role of the Bank is now best understood as facilitating international agreements to reduce poverty, rather than more narrowly addressing international capital market failures. Finally, we examine implications of this perspective for the Bank and for assessing the performance of the Bank. For example, the Bank should not conceptualize its principal activity as capital investment, but instead should consider a broader range of activities and instruments. Moreover, attempts to measure the Bank's success by regressions that use economic growth rates as the dependent variable and disbursements ofaid as an explanatory variable will be misleading.

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Monthly Minaret, 1995

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American Economic Review, 2003

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1993

The Bank has emerged as a major institutional investor in information technology applications in developing countries, as information technology transforms industries, services, and jobs. Currently, almost 90 percent of Bank lending operations contain information systems components. This study examines the increasing trend in Bank lending for information technology applications. It was prepared in response to a need to formally evaluate the effectiveness of technology lending and measure its impact. The study uses qualitative and quantitative data, and should be viewed as exploratory research or as a progress report since the field is developing continually. The study found there have been dramatic returns on investment in information technology applications. The most noticeably in the case of large automation projects. However, the Bank's lending practice still falls short of the potential in this field of development. The Bank has not been proactive in this area. As a result, ...

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