Recent Engagements and Look Ahead to Africa Trip and Spring Meetings

After a busy week, I wanted to provide an overview of several recent activities and engagements in DC and New York.

On Thursday I announced the World Bank Group's new approach to strengthen our delivery of private capital facilitation (PCF) at an?event hosted by?the Center for Strategic and International Studies.?

Developing countries are facing an extremely challenging outlook, with slowing growth and rising interest rates. Many are experiencing a desperate shortage of funds for education, nutrition, health, debt repayments, and infrastructure. Enabling private capital will be essential to close this financing gap.

The PCF initiative increases the emphasis and accountability for Bank operations to?provide policy advice and lending that support economy-wide and sector-specific reforms needed to unlock private capital. The approach brings together PCF analytics from across the Bank Group, including the key Country Private Sector Diagnostic and Business Enabling Environment reports, to help create well-regulated and competitive markets that attract private investment. The initiative sets an ultimate goal of creating an EMDE infrastructure asset class through step-by-step increases in liquidity for infrastructure and climate-related assets.These efforts are key to strengthening private sectors, attracting private capital to meet climate and development costs, and boosting resources for development.?

On a related topic, last weekend I published an op-ed in Barron’s on innovative bonds that the World Bank Group has launched to bring increasing amounts of funding from capital markets and donors to solve global challenges.

Earlier this week, I traveled to New York to participate in the UN’s 2023 Water Conference, which was held on World Water Day. Water is essential to thriving economies, sustainable development, and healthy populations. Yet 2.3 billion people still lack safe drinking water. Our research shows that poor water quality can reduce economic growth by as much as a third. In my remarks at the UN , I spoke about the World Bank’s work on this important issue, which includes almost $30 billion invested in projects in over 70 countries.

I was pleased to meet with Secretary-General Antonio Guterres during my visit to the UN. We discussed the multiple challenges facing developing countries and the need to grow resources for development.

While in New York, I also participated in an event at the Council on Foreign Relations where I had a very interesting discussion with Michelle Caruso-Cabrera on economics, geopolitical developments, regulation, and ways the World Bank Group is working to boost broad-based growth.

In addition, I recently joined Joe Kernen on CNBC’s Squawk Box , Larry Kudlow on Fox Business , and Lisa Abramowicz on Bloomberg Surveillance to discuss the stresses in the banking sector, the long-term drag on growth and asset prices, and the importance of reestablishing key markets.

In a few days, I will travel to Niger and Togo, where I will meet with government officials and others to discuss the region’s challenges and opportunities, including regional fragility, food security, education, and energy solutions, among other topics. While in Niger, I will deliver a live-streamed speech ahead of the 2023 Spring Meetings on Thursday, March 30, hosted by the University of Niamey. The speech will cover challenges facing development policy, including the need for macroeconomic stability, the importance of private capital to international integration, and the increasing need to support global public goods. The trip will mark the first major speech delivered from the Western Sahel by a World Bank Group President, and I look forward to discussing the institution’s strong support to the region.

Our 2023 Spring Meetings will feature a wide range of events and meetings, including the Development Committee where Governors will conclude the first steps in the World Bank Group’s evolution, in addition to the $50 billion increase in IBRD’s ten-year commitment capacity starting July 1. Throughout the week of April 10, there will be prominent meetings of the G20, G7, and Ukraine Ministerial Roundtable, and public events on debt, gender, sustainable finance, behavioral economics, climate, and others.

I will also co-host, along with the IMF and G20 presidency, an important in-person meeting of the Global Sovereign Debt Roundtable on April 12. In a blog post , I wrote about how the World Bank is urging clearer timelines, a debt service suspension by official and private sector creditors at the beginning of a Common Framework, and other steps to encourage meaningful debt restructuring. There is urgency to act quickly given the severe ongoing drain of scarce resources to creditors. The World Bank will support debt restructurings with concessional and net positive resources as restructurings return countries—including Ethiopia, Ghana, and Zambia—to debt sustainability.?