BRIDGETOWN, Barbados– Barbados Prime Minister Mia Mottley Friday called on the World Bank to reform its operations to deal with a changing global environment saying it should follow the lead of the International Monetary Fund (IMF).
“The World Bank regrettably is still a relic of 1945 catering to 1945 issues and has not found itself into the 21st century,” Mottley told a panel discussion on “Building Resilience and Sustainability in the Caribbean.”
The discussion was moderated by Jamaica’s Finance and Public Service Minister, Dr. Nigel Clarke, with the other panelists being the IMF managing director, Kristalina Georgieva, who is winding up a four-day visit here, and in Canada’s Deputy Prime Minister Chrystia Freeland.
Mottley told the panel that the Washington-based financial institution needed to ensure that instead of “only focusing on the financing of low-income countries, starts to look at being that financier of global public goods as the IMF is trying to do.
“The IMF is taking it from a different direction to avoid a balance of payments issue; we are ensuring that you have a robust immune system.
“The World Bank needs to step up to the plate and start to say these are the global public goods that if we don’t guarantee their financing, they are going to jeopardize development across the world,” she said.
Mottley said she hopes that Barbados, at the end of July, will start that discussion “with our partners in the United Nations and the Rockefeller Foundation because it is the most critical discussion to avoid the next generation being poorer. Then this current generation.”
and then 