DEVELOPMENT COMMITTEE
            (Joint Ministerial Committee
                       of the
   Boards of Governors of the Bank and the Fund
                       on the
Transfer of Real Resources to Developing Countries)

ONE HUNDRED AND TENTH MEETING
WASHINGTON, DC – OCTOBER 25, 2024


                                                      DC/S/2024-0060
                                                      October 25, 2024




                 Statement by

                 Janet Yellen
           Secretary of the Treasury

                 United States
                       U.S. TREASURY DEPARTMENT OFFICE OF PUBLIC AFFAIRS

                                                Statement by

                                               Janet Yellen
                                         Secretary of the Treasury

                                                United States

                               110th Meeting of the Development Committee

                                              October 25, 2024
                                              Washington, DC

As we gather for these Annual Meetings and celebrate the 80th Anniversary of the Bretton Woods
institutions, we reaffirm just how vital these institutions are to forging common vision, purpose, and
delivery of solutions in the pursuit of a prosperous and peaceful world for all. It is also a time of reflection,
both on the progress achieved and the work that remains unfinished. And in a world filled with much
uncertainty – we know for certain that the evolution of the World Bank is so important because it is an
indispensable institution.

Faced with numerous shocks, the global economy has been more resilient than many predicted. However,
progress has been uneven, and has even reversed for some. Many countries are struggling, and we need to
accelerate progress on reducing poverty, stimulating growth, delivering jobs, and expanding access to basic
services, including water, energy, quality education and healthcare.

Russia’s unprovoked war on Ukraine and the conflict in the Middle East continue to cause deep human
suffering and pose significant threats to the global economy. The United States has provided $27 billion in
budget support grants to Ukraine in addition to economic and military assistance to support the home front
and the front lines, and our historic sanctions coalition will continue to restrict the Russian military’s access
to the technology, equipment, and funds it needs to feed its war machine. In the Middle East, the United
States remains focused on countering Iran’s destabilizing proxies, facilitating humanitarian aid into Gaza
and Lebanon, promoting economic stability in the West Bank, and pressing for a durable ceasefire in Gaza
and the release of all hostages. We also know that there are other conflicts that may not capture the
headlines but also require our attention.

Time and time again, the World Bank is called upon to respond to these and other challenges to support
developing countries in boosting sustainable and inclusive growth, fighting poverty, and reducing food
insecurity. The work it does and its track record delivering high quality and transparent development
finance underscores why the United States values the World Bank, engages actively with its Management
and staff, and is staunchly committed to its strengthening and evolution.

Shareholders reinforced their commitment to the MDBs two years ago when we collectively called on the
World Bank and the regional development banks to evolve to address global challenges such as climate
change, pandemics, and fragility and conflict that are reversing hard-won development gains and
threatening to undermine global economic growth. Since then, we have made tangible progress in evolving
the World Bank’s mission and vision, incentive structure, operating model, and financial capacity so that it
is better equipped to help countries respond to global challenges with sufficient speed and scale. The Bank’s
updated mission seeks to drive impactful development that is inclusive, resilient to shocks, and sustainable.
The new Framework for Financial Incentives encourages countries to pursue projects with cross-border
impacts and better connects Bank operations with existing pools of concessional finance. The Bank is now
systematically integrating global challenges in its diagnostic work, country engagement, and results
measurement. The new crisis preparedness and response toolkit will enable countries to better prepare for
and respond to unexpected shocks, and the introduction of climate-resilient debt clauses will help free up
government resources for disaster response and recovery efforts as we have seen in St. Vincent and
Grenadines following Hurricane Beryl.

These reforms are backed by a significant boost in the World Bank’s lending capacity. The Bank has taken
measures to responsibly stretch its existing resources that enables an additional $70 billion in capacity over
the next decade. In addition, it has pursued innovative measures for contributions from donors that, subject
to domestic approvals, have the scope to increase capacity for addressing global challenges by an additional
$70 billion.

We celebrate what has been achieved, and we look forward to sustained and focused implementation of the
reforms that have been adopted. We must also maintain the Evolution momentum to further strengthen the
Bank’s operational effectiveness on climate change, pandemics, fragility and conflict, and private capital
mobilization (PCM). Further, we look forward to continued progress on speed and agility without
sacrificing quality, and to the World Bank partnering with other parts of the system for greater impact.

We are grateful that the Bank’s first mover embrace of MDB Evolution helped spark and motivate change
across the system. Building on last year’s call by G20 Leaders for the MDBs to evolve to better address
global challenges, the G20 Roadmap for Better, Bigger, and More Effective MDBs includes specific
recommendations for critical Evolution reforms across the MDB system. It is crucial that shareholders and
MDB Management continue to pursue robust reform agendas to deliver strong impact, while also improving
cohesion and coordination to amplify impact for clients. By leveraging the strengths of the broader
ecosystem of multilateral and bilateral partners, the private sector, philanthropies, and civil society, the
MDBs can drive further progress on sustainable, inclusive, and resilient development.

Sustained, bold action is needed to increase financing flows to meet the Sustainable Development Goals
and climate ambition. We appreciate the World Bank’s reenergized commitment to mobilize more private
capital for development. We applaud the progress made thus far, including a commitment to measure
progress on PCM in the World Bank Corporate Scorecard and the work of the Private Sector Investment
Lab on its five focus areas. We welcome the Bank’s efforts to enhance regulatory certainty in developing
countries; expand the use of guarantees to address political and credit risks, with a goal of tripling guarantee
issuances; boost equity and first loss protection; increase originate-to-distribute approaches, including
through IFC’s Warehouse Enabled Securitization Program; and help countries and businesses manage
foreign exchange risk. We value the Bank’s ongoing efforts to better align its de-risking tools to the
requirements of private capital pursuing climate and development goals, including in the context of the G7
Partnership for Global Infrastructure and Investment.


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For the World Bank to achieve its PCM objectives and significantly increase private capital that is mobilized
and enabled, we encourage the Bank to set clearer incentives for staff to pursue mobilization rather than
own-account financing, and continue to set ambitious targets, report transparently, and share investment
data publicly, including by working with the Global Emerging Markets Consortium to release default and
recovery rates disaggregated by country and sector.

We strongly support efforts to have all parts of the Bank Group work in a more integrated manner as IFC
and MIGA undertake their own reform efforts. MIGA should create a liquidity facility to increase the
utility of its political risk insurance for a greater number of countries and increase its risk appetite. For IFC,
we urge a greater focus on the use of de-risking instruments and risk sharing with the private sector,
alongside increased project preparation work, and better data sharing with the private sector. We also
support more options to provide clients with currency risk mitigation pricing and availability wherever
possible.

In pursuing greater PCM, development impact must remain the North Star. This includes greater attention
to delivering positive outcomes in low-income countries and meeting the IFC’s commitments to low-
income countries and countries facing fragility and conflict as outlined in the World Bank Group’s 2018
Capital Package. Leveraging existing tools and future innovations, we welcome the World Bank’s efforts
to continue to support developing countries to strengthen their business enabling policy and regulatory
environments and develop their capital markets. We strongly welcome the renewed focus on domestic
resource mobilization through technical assistance and policy reform.

The World Bank has an increasingly important role in helping developing countries create the conditions
that enable and nurture sustainable, decent jobs. This includes the Bank’s support for quality infrastructure
along with investments and skills training that prepare people to take on the green and digital jobs of the
future. It also includes a renewed focus on capacity building, where we applaud the World Bank Group
Academy’s efforts to empower the next generation of development leaders. World Bank initiatives like
Mission 300 also can play a pivotal role as electricity access is key for creating jobs at scale.

IDA is a critical and effective financial lifeline for so many countries, and this is why the United States is
proud to be the largest donor to IDA-20 as well as largest cumulative donor to IDA since its inception. We
must work collectively to carry IDA’s strong track record into the future, through an IDA-21 replenishment
that delivers a robust and impactful policy and financial package. And even as the Bank works to simplify
IDA, the results framework remains paramount to assess the success of this replenishment.

We are working together to deliver an IDA policy package with clear commitments to tackle the most
important challenges facing IDA clients, ambitious goals, compelling outcome indicators, and significant
investments to create sustainable and decent jobs and deliver for women and children. We welcome a
strong focus on boosting resilience by addressing climate, pandemic preparedness, and fragility, and
support greater debt sustainability, transparency, and sustainable financing in the IDA-21 policy and
financing frameworks. IDA-21 should also continue to deepen its long-standing attention to areas such as
inclusion, gender equality, quality jobs, good governance, food security and nutrition, and basic services.

We strongly believe an impactful policy package must be supported by a robust financing package that has
the right level of concessionality given countries’ needs, debt and fiscal realities, and we encourage the
World Bank to safeguard IDA’s long-term financial sustainability. A strong IBRD transfer to IDA is vital
to supplement donor contributions and show solidarity across the Bank’s shareholders. As we conclude the
IDA-21 negotiations at the end of this year, we would like to see as many countries as possible step up their
contributions to this essential development institution. We intend to stretch to do our part.



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Market fluctuations, tight financial conditions, and debt vulnerabilities, among other factors, have pressured
already-strained public budgets amid elevated financing costs, impeding the ability of low- and middle-
income countries to make critical investments toward their ambitious sustainable development goals. For
those countries implementing strong macroeconomic reforms and undertaking investments in sustainable
development that support medium-term growth, the international community must ensure that there is
sufficient bilateral, multilateral, and private sector financing to provide a bridge during times of liquidity
stress. We believe that country-specific solutions to development financing challenges could be based on
combined policy measures that support growth, domestic resource mobilization, capacity building, private
capital flows, and targeted concessional financing. We support further work to advance the IMF and World
Bank’s three-pillar country-specific solution through concrete action by year-end. We urge the Bank to
aggressively but responsibly step up its financing to countries undergoing solid reforms but who face
financing constraints. We urge the Bank to catalogue tools to increase financing to meet country needs and
to clarify the types of countries where this coordinated approach could be helpful.

While significant progress has been made on completing the outstanding debt restructurings, we must
continue to improve the Common Framework. Debt transparency and strengthening the debt management
operations for borrowing countries are also critical to a smooth debt restructuring process and for preventing
future debt crises. We welcome Bank staff’s ongoing efforts in improving the granularity and
comprehensive coverage of the Debtor Reporting System database and in implementing the Sustainable
Development Finance Policy to incentivize sound debt transparency and management practices by debtor
countries. Furthermore, we welcome the World Bank’s ongoing work with the IMF on the comprehensive
review of the Low-Income Country – Debt Sustainability Framework (LIC DSF) so that it stays fit-for
purpose, including in the context of debt restructurings. We look forward to the results of their ongoing
analysis in examining the performance of the LIC DSF to-date.

For the first time ever, the World Bank and other MDBs’ collective climate finance surpassed $75 billion
committed to low- and middle-income countries in 2023. We applaud the Bank’s strong contribution to
global climate finance, and its target of 45 percent of climate finance, with half for adaptation. We welcome
the alignment of all investments with the goals of the Paris Agreement, inclusion of all greenhouse gases –
especially methane – into mitigation interventions and encourage the screening of all projects for cost-
effective adaptation measures. We are also pleased the World Bank is hosting the Resilient and Inclusive
Supply-Chain Enhancement (RISE) initiative, since this work is critical to both the success of the clean
energy transition and to building high-quality and sustainable critical mineral industries in low-and-middle-
income countries. Moving forward, we expect the Bank to continue to demonstrate strong leadership in
mobilizing climate finance for adaptation and mitigation in the years ahead. This includes collaborating
with other MDBs to develop climate outcome metrics, beyond volume numbers, to understand the benefits
of specific interventions as well as continuing to provide thought leadership through analytical tools such
as the Country Climate and Development Reports. In addition, the Bank can and should play an important
role in helping develop country-led and owned platforms focused on just energy transition, in collaboration
with host countries, international partners, the private sector, other MDBs, and other stakeholders. We
encourage the Bank to contribute its expertise, convening power, and financial resources to support these
important efforts. We also urge the Bank to mainstream nature and biodiversity considerations into
programming across sectors so that it can best support governments in accomplishing development and
environment objectives.

The mpox health emergency reminds us that pandemic threats can emerge at any time, posing risks to health
outcomes, intensifying financial and debt distress, and demanding a global response. We welcome the
work between the World Bank and WHO to develop an mpox financing tracker, and encourage the World
Bank to demonstrate progress on pandemic prevention, preparedness, and response, through updated
incentives and crisis response tools, and a pandemic preparedness diagnostic tool, as well as clarifying the
Bank’s role in at-risk financing for procurement of medical products during health emergencies. The World

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Bank should also work in concert with regional development banks and other global health bodies, as well
as with the IMF and WHO to operationalize Resilience and Sustainability Trust-supported programs that
address pandemic preparedness.

Over the past decade, violent conflict has spiked dramatically, and the fragility landscape has grown more
complex and both vulnerable to climate change, food insecurity, and forced displacement. The Bank can
apply lessons from repeated shocks that the world and countries have faced in recent years as it updates its
Strategy for Fragility, Conflict, and Violence (FCV). We encourage the Bank to place a strong emphasis
on prevention, and resilience building, while retaining a strong focus on improving governance and building
state capacity and institutions. A renewed FCV strategy should also improve agility, offer a more holistic
response across the World Bank Group to catalyze and incentivize private sector engagement, and advance
partnerships on the ground that strengthen coordination at the humanitarian-development nexus, including
moving in and out of third-party implementation. We urge the World Bank to accelerate efforts to
strengthen internal incentives for talented staff to pursue assignments in fragile and conflict-affected
situations, which is an essential element to achieving the Bank’s mission.

Climate change, pandemics, and fragility and conflict exacerbate, and are exacerbated by, food insecurity.
This is why urgent action and a more holistic focus on food systems are critical to meeting the world’s need
for nutritious food while safeguarding the environment and biodiversity. We welcome the World Bank’s
recent Recipe for a Livable Planet that offered recommendations for how the agri-food system could
contribute to addressing climate change while strengthening global food security. We welcome and
encourage ongoing efforts to implement the IFI Action Plan to Address Food Insecurity and the World
Bank’s commitment to reduce hunger and generate jobs by increasing investment in food systems that will
help build resilience to future shocks. The United States was pleased to convene this year the first IFI
Global Forum for Food Systems Transformation to support long-term collaboration among the IFIs for
investment in resilient food systems. We support the World Bank’s work to better track food and agriculture
financing flows at the country and global levels to promote better coordination, decision making, and
allocation of investments into food systems. We look forward to exploring how the World Bank can work
more closely with other IFIs in the Forum to have greater systemic impact tackling the climate-food-nature
nexus and scaling up private sector engagement in food systems.

The economic inclusion of all people who are marginalized on the basis of their gender, gender identity,
sexual orientation or sex characteristics, and prevention of gender-based violence is a core U.S. objective.
We applaud the World Bank’s updated Gender Strategy as an inclusive framework for future World Bank
programming and will closely follow its implementation. We also strongly support the World Bank’s
Equality of Opportunity for Sexual and Gender Minorities work through its efforts on data and knowledge
generation, and environmental and social framework implementation. We also appreciate that the World
Bank and Asian Development Bank have been jointly working on sexual orientation and gender identity
inclusion from a legal and economic vantage point. We continue to urge the Bank to further enhance
inclusion of various marginalized groups in World Bank-financed operations.

It is only by being broadly inclusive of our entire society, in projects and protections, that we are able to
address the goals of poverty alleviation and human capital development, leaving no one behind. A more
diverse workforce provides a broader range of perspectives, enables more constructive debate, improves
the quality of decision-making and discussion, and leads to better outcomes. We should strive to appoint
more women and members of diverse populations to the World Bank Executive Board and into senior and
staff positions within the World Bank Group.

The World Bank’s ability to deliver on its priorities depends on robust governance and accountability,
including its environmental and social safeguards, and independent accountability mechanisms. As the
World Bank strives to enhance its speed and agility, maintaining a focus on quality is paramount. We look

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forward to the outcomes of efforts to strengthen the implementation of the Environment and Social
Framework. We welcome the Expert Review Team’s analysis and reform recommendations on the World
Bank Accountability Mechanism, and call for support in implementing necessary reforms to uphold the
independence and effectiveness of the Inspection Panel and Dispute Resolution Service. Turning to the
IFC, we urge collaboration to finalize the IFC’s Remedial Action Framework (RAF), a groundbreaking
initiative expected to yield valuable insights and practices. We also welcome the upcoming review of the
IFC’s Sustainability Framework, which, along with the RAF, will set key benchmarks for the private sector.
We are also committed to pursuing necessary reforms identified by the external investigation of IFC’s
conduct during the Compliance Advisor Ombudsman (CAO) investigation of the IFC’s investment in
Bridge International Academies. Progress across all these areas will be essential for the Bank’s global
leadership role as a standard-bearer for best practices in safeguards and accountability.

We applaud the efforts of President Ajay Banga, senior management, and the thousands of staff who have
worked tirelessly towards the goal of evolving the World Bank for the 21st century. Their hard work,
ingenuity, and creativity have helped shaped the World Bank into an institution that is more effective, agile,
and determined to rise to the challenges of the most pressing global needs of today and to be future ready.




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