By IRNA
London : Department for International Development (DFID) was reprimanded Wednesday for its decision to increase funding to the World Bank by 50 percent without sufficient analysis of whether or not this is good value for money.
In a new report, the parliamentary International Development Committee welcomed DFID’s decision to increase its support to the World Bank’s International Development Association.
But the all-party group warned that that the decision to provide the World Bank with 2.1 billion pound sterling was done with ‘insufficient rigor’.
It requested that the government department publishes a full analysis of both how the increase in support was calculated, and how the money would do more to meet DFID’s objectives than using the same amount in other ways.
The committee said it was not persuaded that the Bank is ‘pursuing an aggressive policy of imposing burdensome sensitive policy conditions on borrower countries’.
“World Bank diktat is no substitute for thorough debate and engagement of parliaments and other stakeholders by the borrower country government,” it said.
The report contained a sharp analysis of the Bank’s failure to use impact assessments; its continued use of conditionality; and the British government’s lackluster efforts to bring democracy to the Bank.
Ensuring that the Bank makes more transparent and consistent use of impact assessments ‘is the single most important change in Bank practice that DFID should be pursuing’, it said.
“The UK must not only articulate a vision for reform of the Bank, but must pursue this with vigor,” the committee said.
Its recommendations included initiating work immediately on agreeing an ‘open and merit-based process’ for selecting the Bank’s president.
Its report also cautioned against a ‘too literal interpretation’ of Prime Minister Gordon Brown’s assertion that the Bank should become an ‘environment bank’, saying that it would have to raise additional funds for this purpose.