The World Bank
The World Bank is a global organization created in 1944 at the Bretton Woods Conference alongside the International Monetary Fund. The World Bank has two divisions: the International Bank for Reconstruction and Development and the International Development Association. They provide loans and grants, primarily to poorer countries, that are financed by wealthier nations. Currently, they have 184 member countries, and their main goal is to reduce poverty. The World Bank plays an essential role in the global economy and strives to develop countries to benefit from international commerce and improve living standards. Read pages 7-11 and browse the other sections to become familiar with the World Bank's structure and purpose.
The institutions that make up the World Bank Group specialize in different aspects of development, but they work collaboratively toward the overarching goal of poverty reduction. The terms "World Bank" and "Bank" refer only to IBRD and IDA, whereas the terms "World Bank Group" and "Bank Group" include all five institutions (box 1.1).
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Box 1.1 Origin of the Term "World Bank" |
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| The term "world bank" was first used in reference to IBRD in an article in the Economist on July 22, 1944, in a report on the Bretton Woods Conference. The first meeting of the Boards of Governors of IBRD and the IMF, which was held in Savannah, Georgia, in March 1946, was officially called the "World Fund and Bank Inaugural Meeting," and several news accounts of this conference, including one in the Washington Post, used the term "world bank". What began as a nickname became official shorthand for IBRD and IDA in 1975. |