International Development Association of the World Bank

Thursday 19th December 2013 Written Statements

[The Secretary of State for International Development (Justine Greening)]

The UK has secured important reforms to the way the World Bank delivers aid at international negotiations that were completed on Tuesday.

The International Development Association (IDA) is the part of the World Bank which delivers development assistance to the world’s poorest countries. The IDA negotiations that took place in Moscow this week reached agreement on the 17th replenishment of IDA that will cover the period July 2014 to June 2017.

Following successful engagement from the UK and others, the IDA has agreed to:

Greater emphasis on improving value for money, including better tracking of cost-effectiveness. IDA will also improve its monitoring of private sector finance it attracts;

Increased focus on fragile states and conflict countries, providing investment linked to programmes’ results and performance;

A stronger focus on improving lives and prospects of girls and women and better tracking of the impact of relevant initiatives; and

New guarantee instruments to enable IDA to raise more finance from the private sector.

These reforms build on good progress made over the past three years. IDA was one of the strongest performers in the Department for International Development’s recent review of all its multilateral funding. The refreshed multilateral aid review, published earlier this month, rated IDA as very good value for money.

IDA17 funding will have a substantial impact on the lives of millions of poor people. Thanks to this investment 200 million children will receive life-saving vaccines, 1 million women will be offered loans to help start businesses and up to 20 million people will get access to electricity for the first time. IDA17 will also provide health services for 65 million people and access to clean water for 32 million people.

This week’s negotiations secured a total of over £34 billion in total resources for IDA17. In light of strong results and the reforms made since the last IDA replenishment as well as a commitment to further reforms, the UK has agreed to contribute an average of £938 million per year for the next three years to this total. Britain will also provide concessional loans, to be paid back to the UK, worth £500 million over the three-year period.