The Commonwealth on World Bank

The annual meeting of finance ministers of the Commonwealth countries were recently held in Colombo. Their views on the World Bank and IMF from the final communiqué;

- recognised the need to increase the voice and representation of developing and poor countries in the IMF and World Bank, and urged a time-bound conclusion to a process of fundamental reform in a way that would increase the institutions’ credibility and legitimacy;

- welcomed and encouraged rapid further progress in the joint efforts of the Bank and Fund to identify opportunities for significant scaling up in assistance and reforms to help countries meet the MDGs;

- recognised the importance of good governance for development and encouraged the Bank and Fund to support moves to strengthen the various dimensions of governance as an aspect of their support for countries’ development. Emphasised that the current focus on governance should not obscure the Bank’s core focus on poverty elimination. In this context, Ministers stressed the pre-eminent role of states in promoting good governance; the need for the development community to help build countries’ own capacity and to find ways to engage with poor countries even where governance is weak; and the mutual responsibilities of industrial countries to ensure responsible behaviour in this context by their citizens and companies;

- welcomed the Bank’s current emphasis on infrastructure development.

- looked forward to the conclusions of the current external review of Bank-Fund collaboration and called for continued efforts to strengthen this collaboration and to increase the combined efficiency and effectiveness of the two institutions in their support for low and middle income countries;

- stressed the importance of sustaining the Fund’s financial resources so as not to compromise its role, including its role in low-income countries;

- welcomed the creation of the Fund’s new Exogenous Shocks Facility and encouraged flexibility in its scope and use to facilitate timely disbursement of concessional finance;

- welcomed the World Bank’s proposals to become more responsive to the needs of its middle-income country clients, including MDG related needs; to provide more customised and flexible financial and advisory services such as through blending; and to accelerate moves to use country systems and to find other ways to reduce the costs to member countries of doing business with the Bank; and welcomed the Bank’s work on the Clean Energy Investment Framework and urged its rapid implementation, working with other IFIs.

-Urged the parties involved, including the African Development Bank and World Bank, to accelerate progress in implementing the recently established African Consortium for infrastructure development.