• Home
• /
• Opinion

World Bank really does help the planet's poorest

I spent 34 years at the World Bank. I was country director for Russia, responsible for the bank's programmes there during the last part of the Yeltsin era and the beginning of Putin's presidency. For four years until last July I was country director for India. I resigned because I felt that Wolfowitz's approach to anti-corruption in India was deeply flawed. As a co-signatory to a letter to the Financial Times stating that the bank's credibility was "fatally compromised" by Wolfowitz, I am also one of the 42 former World Bank executives whom Klein refers to.

There is a lot about the World Bank that needs to be improved -- the way its president is chosen, a need for greater openness, and some rebalancing of power within its board -- and I would be the first to agree that there have been some cases of poor advice by the bank. But Klein's examples are not all well-grounded in fact. Indeed she may be an unwitting advocate of the interests of the better-off who, sadly, often turn out to be the main beneficiaries of policies such as subsidies or labour-market controls.

Klein might instead want to mention the many examples where the bank has been a force for policy changes and programmes that have really helped poor people, often despite the opposition of vested interests: such as the bank's role in supporting a programme for the empowerment of over eight million women in the state of Andra Pradesh in India. She might also like to document the public opposition by the bank to industrial-country agricultural subsidies, and its calls for better balance in international trade negotiations. She could even refer to the huge number of dedicated bank staff who feel betrayed by what Wolfowitz has done.

The picture Klein paints of the bank in Russia -- Yeltsin as an instrument of Washington-authored programmes, the bank's involvement in the transfer of assets to the oligarchs, the bank condoning alleged corruption by senior Russian officials -- is uninformed nonsense. With hindsight there was much the bank could have done better in the extraordinarily complex challenge it faced in Russia, but there is also much to be proud of -- including its help to strengthen economic institutions as well as controls over public expenditure; to reform the coal sector, where corruption was rampant; and to focus on the glaring inadequacies of social protection.

Attacking corruption is a difficult and long-term business. Wolfowitz's record -- the way he and his team have addressed specific cases of corruption, and his failure to apply to himself the standards he rightly expects of others -- shows he is not the man for the job. His continued tenure at the bank can only damage an institution which can be so effective in helping the poorest in the world.

Michael Carter was World Bank country director for Russia from 1997-2001, and for India from 2002-6

Guardian News Service