Martin Wolf ‘s column (“How to finance a faster shift to a better world”, Opinion, October 18) is right to underscore the urgency of better positioning the multilateral development banks to address today’s pressing challenges: eliminating extreme poverty, addressing climate change and developing finance mechanisms that meet the needs of countries across a wide variety of circumstance.
Unfortunately, negotiations to date around transforming the multilateral development banks have given relatively short shrift to those countries most in need of their resources. At the recent IMF/World Bank annual meetings in Marrakech, shareholders discussed how to expand World Bank financing to help middle-income countries, the best means to mobilise additional private sector financing and ways to streamline the World Bank’s operational model — all worthy topics.
However, what was missing was a serious debate about how best to help low-income countries at a time when they remain weighed down by debt distress, the lingering impact of the pandemic, rising interest rates, the need to adapt to climate change, and steep prices for food, fuel and fertiliser.
Boosting concessional financing for low-income countries will require bold and generous actions on the part of these institutions’ wealthiest shareholders.
These include additional contributions for the International Development Association’s enhanced crisis response window, significantly increasing donor contributions to IDA’s upcoming replenishment and recycling IMF special drawing rights including to the African Development Bank’s new asset class of hybrid capital.
These are the kinds of steps necessary to help ensure that low-income countries — and their people — are not left behind at such an important moment.
Gargee Ghosh
President, Global Policy & Advocacy, Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation Seattle, WA, US
