Multilateral Development Banks

The Biden administration and the Congress rightly went big in the recently passed American Rescue Plan at a time of tremendous need. The package was appropriately focused on the domestic side, but it did not neglect the rest of the world. One might reasonably ask then why $1 billion or $2 billi...

This week, the Inter-American Development Bank’s governors gather for their annual meeting. Much is at stake as the region reels under the compound crises of COVID-19 and recession. But none of this urgency is yet evident in the IDB’s public case to its member countries.

Today the IDB is again making the case for a capital increase to its shareholders. Yet, despite an unfolding crisis that threatens development progress in Latin America to a degree that eclipses the Global Financial Crisis,  talk of a financing cliff at the bank is absent from its appeal for mo...

As we close out a year in which the UN marked its 75th anniversary, we’re taking a hard look at whether reform of multilateral agencies has a chance. Two guests with extensive backgrounds in diplomacy and international service join co-hosts Heba Aly and Jeremy Konyndyk on this sixth episode of Rethi...

COVID-19 has highlighted the ways that global public goods play an increasingly important role in the world, in both negative and positive ways. It’s increasingly clear that many of the biggest challenges nations face—and the solutions—won’t be restricted to one nation’s borders. The need for region...

Masood Ahmed cuts through the discussion about how much financial support the World Bank is providing to LMICs, and urges that the MDBs, and their sharedholders, should be more ambitious in their support of LMICs in light of the COVID-19 pandemic.

Providing reliable electricity is complex and expensive: large power plants can be billion-dollar investments. As a result, a growing number of cash-strapped developing countries are signing power purchase agreements with electricity providers to shift investment costs to the private sector.