World Bank
세계은행
An international development bank founded as the International Bank for Reconstruction and Development (IBRD) together with the IMF at the 1944 Bretton Woods conference. It first lent for the reconstruction of countries devastated by the Second World War and later widened its lending to infrastructure and poverty reduction in developing countries. In the narrow sense the name covers the IBRD and the International Development Association (IDA, 1960); in the broad sense, the five-institution World Bank Group. It is headquartered in Washington, its president is traditionally an American, and its structural adjustment lending of the 1980s drew heavy criticism.
In depth
The World Bank was created together with the IMF at the Bretton Woods conference of 1–22 July 1944. Many countries attended, but the United States and the United Kingdom dominated the negotiations. As its name said, its first mission was to finance the reconstruction of European countries devastated by the war; it was to lend to countries that could not borrow commercially and could demand policy reforms in return. It began operations on 25 June 1946.
Its first loan, approved on 9 May 1947, was $250 million to France, half the amount requested, with strict conditions: a balanced budget and priority for repaying the Bank over other governments. Before approval the US State Department told the French government that its members associated with the Communist Party would first have to be removed; France broke up its tripartite coalition with the Communists, and within hours the loan was approved. When the Marshall Plan began the same year and Europe received aid from other sources, the Bank turned to non-European allies.
Until 1968 its loans went to infrastructure such as ports, highways and power plants that would generate income to repay them. In 1960 the International Development Association was formed to give soft loans to developing countries. Under Robert McNamara, appointed president by Lyndon Johnson in 1968, the Bank concentrated from 1974 to 1980 on meeting the basic needs of people in the developing world and extended lending into social services. Besides members' contributions, it raises most of its capital on international bond markets on the strength of its AAA credit rating.
The heaviest criticism concerns structural adjustment. When the 1979 energy crisis plunged many countries into crisis, the Bank responded with structural adjustment loans that required policy changes to reduce inflation and fiscal imbalance. In some countries, particularly in Sub-Saharan Africa, growth regressed and inflation worsened, and by the late 1980s some international organisations held that cuts in social spending and the removal of food subsidies were worsening life for the world's poor. In 1999 the Bank and the IMF replaced structural adjustment loans with the Poverty Reduction Strategy Paper approach. Voting power follows capital, and after the 2010 reform the United States still holds the largest share, 15.85 percent.