36 Facts About World Bank

1.

World Bank is an international financial institution that provides loans and grants to the governments of low- and middle-income countries for the purpose of pursuing capital projects.

FactSnippet No. 1,093,372
2.

The World Bank is the collective name for the International Bank for Reconstruction and Development and International Development Association, two of five international organizations owned by the World Bank Group.

FactSnippet No. 1,093,373
3.

The World Bank operates a number of training wings and it works with the Clean Air Initiative and the UN Development Business.

FactSnippet No. 1,093,374
4.

World Bank has been criticized as promoting inflation and harming economic development, causing protests in 1988 and 2000.

FactSnippet No. 1,093,375
5.

World Bank Group is an extended family of five international organizations, and the parent organization of the World Bank, the collective name given to the first two listed organizations, the IBRD and the IDA:.

FactSnippet No. 1,093,376
6.

World Bank was created at the 1944 Bretton Woods Conference, along with the International Monetary Fund .

FactSnippet No. 1,093,377
7.

The intention behind the founding of the World Bank was to provide temporary loans to low-income countries that could not obtain loans commercially.

FactSnippet No. 1,093,378
8.

World Bank's 1982 decision to replace the bank's Chief Economist, Hollis B Chenery, with Anne Krueger was an example of this new focus.

FactSnippet No. 1,093,379
9.

UNICEF reported in the late 1980s that the structural adjustment programs of the World Bank had been responsible for "reduced health, nutritional and educational levels for tens of millions of children in Asia, Latin America, and Africa".

FactSnippet No. 1,093,380
10.

Traditionally, based on a tacit understanding between the United States and Europe, the president of the World Bank has been selected from candidates nominated by the United States.

FactSnippet No. 1,093,381
11.

World Bank announced that he would resign effective 1 February 2019.

FactSnippet No. 1,093,382
12.

World Bank was replaced on an interim basis by now-former World Bank CEO Kristalina Georgieva, then by David Malpass on 9 April 2019.

FactSnippet No. 1,093,383
13.

In September 2020 during the COVID-19 pandemic, the World Bank announced a $12 billion plan to supply "low and middle income countries" with a vaccine once it was approved.

FactSnippet No. 1,093,384
14.

Traditionally, the president of the Bank has always been a U S citizen nominated by the United States, the largest shareholder in the bank .

FactSnippet No. 1,093,385
15.

Vice presidents of the World Bank are its principal managers, in charge of regions, sectors, networks and functions.

FactSnippet No. 1,093,386
16.

The five United Nations member states that are not members of the World Bank are Andorra, Cuba, Liechtenstein, Monaco, and North Korea.

FactSnippet No. 1,093,387
17.

In 2010 voting powers at the World Bank were revised to increase the voice of developing countries, notably China.

FactSnippet No. 1,093,388
18.

Poorest developing countries in the world, the bank's assistance plans are based on poverty reduction strategies; by combining an analysis of local groups with an analysis of the country's financial and economic situation the World Bank develops a plan pertaining to the country in question.

FactSnippet No. 1,093,389
19.

Robert B Zoellick, the former president of the World Bank, said when the loans were announced on 15 December 2007, that IDA money "is the core funding that the poorest developing countries rely on".

FactSnippet No. 1,093,390
20.

World Bank has been assigned temporary management responsibility of the Clean Technology Fund, focused on making renewable energy cost-competitive with coal-fired power as quickly as possible, but this may not continue after UN's Copenhagen climate change conference in December 2009, because of the Bank's continued investment in coal-fired power plants.

FactSnippet No. 1,093,391
21.

World Bank doubled its aid for climate change adaptation from $2.

FactSnippet No. 1,093,392
22.

In 2021, the World Bank offered support to Kazakhstan to help the country in its mission for decarbonization and carbon neutrality.

FactSnippet No. 1,093,393
23.

World Bank Institute was a "global connector of knowledge, learning and innovation for poverty reduction".

FactSnippet No. 1,093,394
24.

World Bank Institute was formerly known as Economic Development Institute, established on 11 March 1955 with the support of the Rockefeller and Ford Foundations.

FactSnippet No. 1,093,395
25.

The World Bank is engaging a solicitor in Thailand to process all documentation in order to obtain this status.

FactSnippet No. 1,093,396
26.

World Bank or the World Bank Group is a sitting observer in the United Nations Development Group.

FactSnippet No. 1,093,397
27.

World Bank collects and processes large amounts of data and generates them on the basis of economic models.

FactSnippet No. 1,093,398
28.

The World Bank's repository is listed in the Registry of Research Data Repositories re3data.

FactSnippet No. 1,093,399
29.

World Bank has long been criticized by non-governmental organizations, such as the indigenous rights group Survival International, and academics, including Henry Hazlitt, Ludwig Von Mises, and its former Chief Economist Joseph Stiglitz.

FactSnippet No. 1,093,400
30.

Stiglitz argued that the free market reform policies that the World Bank advocates are often harmful to economic development if implemented badly, too quickly, in the wrong sequence or in weak, uncompetitive economies.

FactSnippet No. 1,093,401
31.

In 2021, an independent inquiry of the World Bank's Doing Business reports by the law firm WilmerHale found that World Bank leaders, including then-Chief Executive Kristalina Georgieva and then-President Jim Yong Kim, pressured staff members of the bank to alter data to inflate the rankings for China, Saudi Arabia, Azerbaijan and the United Arab Emirates.

FactSnippet No. 1,093,402
32.

The World Bank responded with structural adjustment loans, which distributed aid to struggling countries while enforcing policy changes in order to reduce inflation and fiscal imbalance.

FactSnippet No. 1,093,403
33.

The World Bank changed structural adjustment loans, allowing for social spending to be maintained, and encouraging a slower change to policies such as transfer of subsidies and price rises.

FactSnippet No. 1,093,404
34.

World Bank requires sovereign immunity from countries it deals with.

FactSnippet No. 1,093,405
35.

World Bank favored PricewaterhouseCoopers as a consultant in a bid for privatizing the water distribution in Delhi, India.

FactSnippet No. 1,093,406
36.

World Bank has been criticized for the slow response of its Pandemic Emergency Financing Facility, a fund that was created to provide money to help manage pandemic outbreaks.

FactSnippet No. 1,093,407