A “solutions bank”

By Jainarine Deonauth

On October 12, President of the World Bank, Jim Yong Kim, was reported as telling shareholders he wants the institution to become a “solutions bank” that can work with partners and help “bend the arc of history” to eliminate extreme poverty. “Let me be clear, when I say we will be a solutions bank, I do not mean to suggest that we have ready-made solutions for every development problem. We do not, nor is this our goal,” said Kim. He said that through decades of development work he has learnt that the best solutions to economic and social problems often lie with the individuals and communities themselves coping with these challenges in their daily life.
Speaking to the boards of governors of the World Bank Group and International Monetary Fund at the Bank/Fund Annual Meetings in Tokyo, Kim noted, “A solutions bank will be more focused on delivery than ever before. During an era of constrained resources and daunting challenges, this is what both our donors and our clients demand.”
Kim observed that ongoing economic and financial instability in Europe continues to threaten growth and jobs in developing countries. Of note too is that surging food prices are stretching the budgets of the poorest and many countries in the Middle East are embarking on perhaps their most important transition in generations.
In this challenging environment, Kim cautioned that support for development can fade in the face of other priorities, but he emphasised that with over one billion people living in extreme poverty and 200 million unemployed, now is not the time for countries or institutions to go their own way or focus only on their own narrow interests.
He noted the remarkable development progress made in recent years as, over the last decade, some 50 developing countries – collectively home to over four billion people – have seen their Gross Domestic Product grow by an average of at least five per cent a year, Guyana being a typical example here. Thanks to this growth, poverty has fallen more quickly than ever before; the first Millennium Development Goal (MDG), to halve the 1990 poverty rate by 2015, was achieved some five years ahead of schedule.
Quoting Dr Martin Luther King Jr., Kim called on shareholders and other development partners to come together “to bend the arc of history” and accelerate this recent progress to work toward the goal of eliminating extreme poverty.
He also used the opportunity to call on the World Bank to leverage its knowledge and talent to advance a “science of delivery,” and identified four early actions to speed this process. First, establish a clear and measurable bottom line. Considering that the bank’s mission is to end poverty and build shared prosperity, it is necessary to come up with a bottom line in the form of ambitious targets for these two goals.
Second, strengthen implementation and result, dealing with streamlining procedures and simplifying processes, while also cutting down project preparation time and focusing more on results.
Third, provide clients with integrated solutions for maximum impact.  According to Kim, better synergies will reinforce the bank’s comparative advantage as the only global development institution that can credibly support the public and private sectors, provide access to exceptional knowledge resources, and offer risk insurance to energise investment. And fourth, continue investing in data and analytic tools, building on the success of the Open Data initiative. Kim reminded stakeholders that data is crucial to setting priorities, making sound policy, and tracking results, yet many countries have weak statistical capacity, and lack reliable and updated economic and poverty data. For this reason, it is important that stakeholders work together in ensuring that virtually all developing countries have timely and accurate data.
We endorse the vision outlined by the World Bank’s president, which in essence says that the time has come to move from dreaming of a world free of poverty to achieving it. It is time to bend the arc of history.