International Development Association of the World Bank

Andrew Mitchell Excerpts

Thursday 16th December 2010 Written Statements

[The Secretary of State for International Development (Mr Andrew Mitchell)]

The International Development Association (IDA) is the part of the World Bank that provides assistance to the poorest countries. The international negotiations to agree its work and funding for the next three years concluded on Wednesday 15 December, and I wish to inform the House of the outcomes.

Thanks to UK pressure, for the first time, IDA has set out some of the results it will deliver with this replenishment. These are

Improving the Lives of Poor People: IDA has set itself the target of:

Providing 80 million people with access to improved water sources

Providing 2 million people with access to improved sanitation facilities

Immunising 200 million children

Providing 30 million more people with health services, including 2 million pregnant women

Recruiting and training 2 million teachers

Helping countries create wealth and jobs: IDA provides a range of support including funding key infrastructure, such as power, irrigation and roads. This is essential for boosting trade, encouraging private investment, and enabling people to access markets, schools and health centres. IDA has set itself the target of constructing and rehabilitating 80,000 km of roads.

Help poor countries cope with shocks: The financial crisis, the spike in food prices, and natural disasters have all put poor people under enormous strain recently. A new facility is being established in IDA that will enable the bank to offer countries additional support, for example to Haiti for reconstruction after the earthquake.

Throughout the negotiations, the Government have pressed the bank to step up its efforts to improve the lives of poor women and girls and those who live in fragile states, and the bank has made some clear commitments. These include more support to countries like Afghanistan.

IDA is an important and effective channel for international efforts to achieve the millennium development goals (MDGs). As the emerging findings of the Government’s comprehensive multilateral aid review demonstrate, its high-quality analysis and the deep expertise of its staff are drawn on by Governments in IDA countries to develop robust national poverty reduction strategies and make good public spending choices. In its own programmes, IDA delivers flexible assistance in support of countries’ priorities. As well as investing in areas such as health, education and agriculture it also helps countries develop the institutions, the policies and practices that underpin sustained poverty reduction and economic growth, for example helping to strengthen accountability and tackle corruption. The bank has a strong track record of robust evaluation and lesson learning, and its new transparency policy puts it at the forefront of multilateral agencies in this regard.

In light of IDA’S strengths, its central role in helping the international community achieve the MDGs, and the results and reforms it has committed to deliver, the UK will provide an average of £888 million a year for the next three years. The result of the negotiations, following all the donor pledges and action from bank management, is that IDA will have $49.3 billion (£32.4 billion) to invest in tackling poverty in the three years starting in July 2011, of which the UK’s burden share is 12%.