World Bank Group

Syllable breakdown

Dictionary meaning

a family of five international organisations — the International Bank for Reconstruction and Development, the International Development Association, the International Finance Corporation, the Multilateral Investment Guarantee Agency, and the International Centre for Settlement of Investment Disputes — that together constitute the world's largest multilateral development finance institution, providing loans, grants, guarantees, risk management products, and advisory services to developing country governments and the private sector; the World Bank Group was established at the Bretton Woods Conference in 1944, initially to finance European reconstruction after the Second World War, and subsequently reoriented toward economic development in low- and middle-income countries; it is owned by 189 member countries, with voting power weighted by capital contribution, giving rich countries — particularly the United States — dominant influence over governance; the Bank's poverty reduction and shared prosperity goals are pursued through country lending programmes, global knowledge production, and policy dialogue, but its structural adjustment lending in the 1980s and 1990s generated lasting controversy about the conditionality attached to its financing