World Bank framing long-term strategy

Q: Is there any way to access the following World Bank draft strategy ? - Vinay Baindur

Read the following article published in Hindu :

Date:02/09/2007

URL: http://www.thehindu.com/2007/09/02/stories/2007090260530800.htm

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World Bank framing long-term strategy
Ashok Dasgupta
NEW DELHI: With globalisation changing the contours of economic decision-making across the world, the World Bank is reorienting its strategy to see how best it can serve the needs of various countries in the years to come.
Armed with a draft framework of the long-term strategy, the Bank's Global Chief Economist and Senior Vice-President Francois Bourguignon is on a whirlwind global tour to get a feedback on the ongoing exercise to see how best the Bank can stay relevant to the needs of various developing countries in the next 10-20 years.
In an exclusive interview with The Hindu on Saturday, Mr. Bourguignon, who is here on a two-day visit for deliberations with think-tanks and apex chambers on the issue, said: "I have been coming to India for quite some time, b ut this specific visit is within the framework of the world tour I am making to get a feedback on an exercise, which we are conducting in the Bank to try and figure out what could be the elements on which we could rely on to design a long-term strategy for the World Bank in the next 10-20 years."
As the new President is concerned with the long-term directions of the World Bank, "we thought it was important to lay down an analytical groundwork for this kind of strategic decisions. So we have written a kind of draft and I am travelling around the world to get a feedback from various countries," he said.
While the exercise has been some kind of a learning experience for the Bank, at the same time, "it is a kind of review of what has been done in the past and the lessons that we can draw from that experience and it is also drawing on that experience to figure out what we should do in the future. What do we think would be the needs in the future for World Bank help or intervention and, at the same time, what is the way in which the Bank should help intervene in countries in the future," he said.
For some time already, the Bank has modified the way in which it does business and relates with its partner countries. Elaborating on the change, Mr Bourguignon said: "I would say that the old days of structural adjustment policies are now gone. From this, we learnt that certainly, we cannot be too rigid on the kind of policies we recommend, that the policies must depend on individual circumstances of a country and, may be, in the circumstances which are time dependent," and we learnt that it was essential for the policies to be owned or to be decided by our partner countries rather than imposed by the World Bank."