The World Bank Near the Turn of the Century

Abstract

The fiftieth anniversary of any institution, including those institutions created at Bretton Woods, should serve as an occasion not so much to celebrate past accomplishments as to assess the need for changes required in the light of altered circumstances. Unfortunately, the World Bank’s own recently released effort whose title promises just that,¹ misses the opportunity and is largely a justification of what has been done, and basically a public relations document. While it states (p. 17) that ‘the Bank Group has made its share of mistakes’, one searches in vain for either an enumeration or elucidation of these mistakes; nor is there any discussion of just how the Bank intends to behave differently in the future.