World Bank News and Articles
In the hot days of July 1944, while World War II was still raging, about 250 economists, lawyers and politicians from 44 nations gathered in the small village of Bretton Woods, N.H., to thrash out a blueprint for the world's money system.In three weeks of meetings -- held in the unair-conditioned Mount Washington Hotel -- they produced an agreement that established the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank and set up a system of fixed exchange rates.
There will be more limousines than ever before when the governors of the International Monetary Fund (IMF) convene tomorrow for their annual meeting. Out of them will step the leaders of many of the poorest nations in the world. It will be a week of very expensive parties, of extraordinary fears that have all but become routine. Every September, the far-flung personnel of the IMF and of the World Bank gather in Washington for their annual meeting.
Consumers Bank announced the acquisition of Realty World New England Region Inc., a network of real estate brokers. Realty World New England, a licensee of the national Realty World organization of Annandale, Va., manages about 50 offices across New England.
Treasury Secretary Donald T. Regan yesterday offered an upbeat assessment of the world economy to world financial leaders meeting here, but delegates from poor nations warned of possible social unrest if the developing world is not helped out of its economic crisis.Regan told 2,500 delegates at the annual meeting of the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank that the "global recession is over."
The International Monetary Fund, in a generally upbeat report citing "improved confidence" in the global economy, said yesterday that the "pressing task" now is to assure that the economic recovery under way in the United States and other nations can be sustained and spread to parts of the world still in recession.But IMF officials, discussing the annual report, preliminary to a joint annual meeting here later this month with the World Bank.
Talk about penny-wise and pound-foolish! President Reagan's decision to slash the American commitment for subsidized aid to the Third World by 25 percent, saving $250 million a year, looms as a bonehead play by an administration tolerating annual budget deficits of almost that many billions.Other nations gear their contributions to IDA, the World Bank's concessional aid agency, on a three-to- one ratio to the American donation.
China was the top recipient of World Bank lending during the fiscal year ended June 30, the official Xinhua News Agency reported.China received US$3.17 billion in loans and credits from the bank and the International Development Association, the bank affiliate that lends to designated countries at below-market interest rates, Xinhua said, quoting the World Bank's annual report.
Jamaica seems to have done a much better job than other Caribbean nations in grappling with the problem of poverty, a World Bank report says.While poverty declined in Jamaica in the 1980s, the number of poor people rose sharply in Trinidad and Tobago, Barbados, the Bahamas and Guyana during the decade.According to a World Bank report on poverty and incomes in the Caribbean in the 1980s, Jamaica cut its poverty rate by more than half between 1980 and 1989.