MESSAGE FROM THE PRESIDENT OF THE WORLD BANK GROUP AND CHAIRMAN OF THE BOARD OF EXECUTIVE DIRECTORS
This has been a year of testing for the World Bank Group and our ability to respond to the needs of our clients. Financial crisis has spiraled into an economic crisis and an unemployment crisis, and events could next become a social and human crisis with political implications. In this fast-moving and uncertain environment, the 2009 Annual Report reflects how the World Bank is leaning forward to serve our clients with flexibility, speed, innovation, and attention to results. Our focus has been on mobilizing resources to support the projects and people who need them quickly. The World Bank is able to triple its support to IBRD borrowers to up to $100 billion through fiscal 2011, and we have been moving quickly to put these resources to work. For the poorest countries, we have established the Financial Crisis Response Fast-Track Facility to accelerate approval processes for $2 billion of IDA grants and no-interest loans, and we have $42 billion of IDA resources available through fiscal 2011. We have also established the Vulnerability Financing Facility (VFF) to streamline crisis support to the poor and vulnerable. The facility builds on the achievements of the Global Food Crisis Response Program (GFRP), which provided immediate relief to countries hit hard by last year’s high food prices. The VFF will address agriculture under the existing GFRP, which we expanded this year from $1.2 billion to $2 billon to further help countries respond to ongoing food price volatility. It will address social interventions—employment, safety nets, and protection of basic social services including nutrition—under the new Rapid Social Response Program. We are building on lessons learned from the financial crises that hit Latin America in the 1980s and East Asia in the 1990s. To ensure that governments can protect targeted social expenditures and finance effective safety nets, the World Bank Group is tripling support for safety net programs such as school feeding, nutrition, conditional cash transfer projects, and cash for work. Women and girls are a particular focus of these efforts, because we know they are the hardest hit during crisis times. To focus attention on investment in infrastructure that can create jobs as well as build a foundation for long-term economic growth, the Bank is increasing lending in infrastructure to $15 billion per year over the next three years. We have established the Infrastructure Recovery and Assets Platform, a three-year effort to help partner countries respond to the global crisis through increased investment in infrastructure and support for public-private partnerships in infrastructure. To increase our efforts to support agriculture, the Bank is boosting funding for agriculture to $12 billion over the next two years to increase productivity and production.
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THE WORLD BANK ANNUAL REPORT 2009
To fill important gaps and attract donor support, we have launched the Capitalization Fund to help strengthen banks in smaller emerging markets, and a microfinance facility that will support lending to as many as 60 million poor borrowers in many of the world’s poorest countries. We are supporting trade financing to enable the continued flow of trade credit into the market through the IFC’s Global Trade Liquidity Program, which we expect to support up to $50 billion in trade over the next three years. In all these efforts, we are building out our network—partnering with UN agencies, regional banks, foundations, private businesses, and civil society organizations. For example, last year the World Bank launched the creation of the Climate Investment Funds in support of the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change. These funds, designed through a consultative process involving a broad range of development partners, aim to strengthen our partnerships with both developing and developed countries to address the urgent challenges of climate change. During fiscal 2009, the Bank Group committed $58.8 billion in loans, grants, equity investments, and guarantees to its members and to private businesses in member countries—an increase of $20.6 billion (54 percent) from fiscal 2008. The contributions, creativity, and commitment of the people of the World Bank Group are critical to our scale-up effort. I know that our clients—from all parts of the world—appreciate the hard work of our staff, and continue to look to the Bank Group for actions and ideas. So we must maintain the public trust that we have been given by listening to our clients, delivering on our commitments, monitoring results, anticipating risks, and putting the governance and anticorruption agenda at the heart of all of our activities. In closing, I want to thank the staff of the World Bank Group both in Washington and around the world. They have stepped up to the new challenges we face, and they are transforming us into a more dynamic, flexible, and innovative institution. I am also grateful to our Board of Executive Directors, the Governors, and our many contributors and partners for their ongoing help and counsel.
Robert B. Zoellick