Active vocabulary

Before recommending a Bank loan, the staff of the Bank must be reasonably satisfied that the productivity of the borrowing country will be increased and that the prospects for repayment are good. A country must be judged creditworthy. Engineering investigations are frequently carried out to determine the probable relation of a proposed project to benefits and costs. Increasingly, however, the Bank has shifted somewhat away from project lending (e.g., for a dam or a highway or a port); it has become concerned with education and other human services, the environment, and, through structural adjustment loans, the modification of governmental policies that are thought to have impeded long­run growth. The Bank has also paid increasing attention to the evaluation of previous lending. Recently, moreover, it has acceded to the requests of the American secretary of the treasury to help to ease the huge, outstanding, largely commercial bank debt.

Today, the World Bank Group is a far cry from what it was when the World Bank began in 1946 §under President Eugene Meyer—with three floors of rented office space at 1818 H Street NW and a few dozen employees. Even in the final days of the presidency of George Woods, in 1968, the group had fewer than 1500 employees and four buildings. As of August 31, 1991, however, on the eve of the accession to the presidency of Lewis Preston, former chairman of the board of J. P. Morgan & Co., the World Bank Group had 3 senior vice presidents, 14 vice presidents, and 6500 employees scattered through 18 separate buildings in Washington, D.C.; 2 large offices in Paris and Tokyo; and 50 regional offices. The World Bank Group has had a significant positive effect on the flow of capital to the poorer countries of the world, both directly and indirectly, and knowledge of Third World problems has increased enormously. Still, the record of growth is spotty. In much of East Asia, per capita income is rising rapidly, but in Africa south of the Sahara, in South Asia, and in much of Latin America, the growth of per capita income has been discouragingly slow.

The Board of Governors delegates many of its powers to the Board of Directors, which is composed of the Executive Directors of the IBRD, and which represents IFC's member countries. The Board of Directors reviews all projects. The President of the World Bank Group, Robert Zoellick, also serves as IFC's president. IFC's CEO and Executive Vice President, Lars Thunell, is responsible for the overall management of day-to-day operations. He was appointed on January 15, 2006. Although IFC coordinates its activities in many areas with the other institutions in the World Bank Group, IFC generally operates independently as it is legally and financially autonomous with its own Articles of Agreement, share capital, management and staff.

Within the World Bank Group, the World Bank finances projects with sovereign guarantees, while the IFC finances projects without sovereign guarantees. This means that the IFC is primarily active in private sector projects, although some projects in the public sector (at the municipal or sub-national level) have recently been funded.

Apart from its core investment activities, IFC also carries out technical cooperation projects in many countries to improve the investment climate. These activities may be

The International Development Association (IDA) created on September 24, 1960, is the part of the World Bank that helps the world's poorest countries. It complements the World Bank's other lending arm — the International Bank for Reconstruction and Development (IBRD) — which serves middle-income countries with capital investment and advisory services.

IDA is responsible for providing long-term, interest-free loans to the world's 80 poorest countries, 39 of which are in Africa. IDA provides grants and credits (subject to general conditions), with repayment periods of 35 to 40 years. Since its inception, IDA credits and grants have totaled $161 billion, averaging $7-$9 billion a year in recent years and directing the largest share, about 50%, to Africa. While the IBRD raises most of its funds on the world's financial markets, IDA is funded largely by contributions from the governments of the richer member countries. Additional funds come from IBRD income and repayment of IDA credits.

IDA critics allege the improper use of financial resources, and object to a voting structure based on financial contributions (the largest being from the U.S. until 2007, when