Today, the Fourth High Level Forum on Aid Effectiveness has opened in Busan, Korea. The HLF4 is an opportunity for the global development community to come together and showcase the results that our partner countries have been producing, and to shape the future course of the aid effectiveness agenda in a dramatically changing global development landscape.
There is lots of interest in the World Bank—and indeed, around the world—in this event. Led by Sri Mulyani Indrawati, Managing Director, the Bank delegation to Busan is equipped with global, institutional and country level expertise and experience in this agenda, as well as evidence that attests to the extent of progress on aid effectiveness and areas that require more effort to make development cooperation more effective.
A champion of aid effectiveness, the Bank is a leader in shaping and promoting the international aid effectiveness agenda. At the Bank, we have 3 key priorities for HLF-4.
1. Country ownership and leadership: Supporting countries to lead and manage their own development is at the core of our efforts, including emphasis on mechanisms to develop effective institutions. With our country-driven business model, the client is in the driver’s seat!
2. Transparency for results: We are a ‘results’ Bank – working together with governments, civil society organizations, the private sector, and other development partners to support developing countries reduce poverty and improve the lives of their people. We focus on development results in all our activities – financing, technical advice, policy dialogue, and knowledge products – to ensure that we deliver on this commitment. As transparency is a vital component of citizen involvement, anticorruption, and development results, we are leading the work at the HLF to emphasize the importance of aid and fiscal transparency at the country and the international levels.
3. Development partnerships beyond aid: While aid will remain a critical development resource for many partner countries, other sources of and approaches to finance and knowledge are becoming increasingly important, and the World Bank Group is in a unique position to partner with different actors and to help our partner countries leverage these different forms of assistance whether from the private sector, non-profit organizations, or other partner countries and organizations.
In addition to these three areas, the Bank will focus on the special case of fragile and conflict situations, leveraging momentum from the 2011 World Development Report and working in close collaboration with the g7+, International Dialogue, and INCAF.
Due to our concerted efforts to internalize aid effectiveness at every level of the institution, we are in an excellent position to contribute a great deal to this agenda. I believe we are trying to practice what we preach. The recent Aid Effectiveness Showcase illustrates how we are implementing these priorities in practice at the country, institutional, and global levels.
Moving forward, we want to embrace all forms of development cooperation and build and maintain partnerships beyond aid. We have to better leverage our limited resources by, for example, encouraging a greater role for the private sector and private foundations, and working together with some of the middle-income countries that become strong partners of development today.