One of the biggest hopes people expressed about Jim Kim's nomination to become president of the World Bank was that he would bring a fresh perspective, focused on achieving results, rather than reinforce the institution's bureaucratic machinery. Unfortunately, President Kim's recent remarks at the Center for Foreign Relations suggest that bureaucratic inertia is winning. His references to "following the money" and "zero tolerance for corruption" suggest that he is unaware of the direct and indirect costs of the Bank's intrusive and prescriptive money-tracking technology or is being erroneously advised that they are an unfortunate but unavoidable burden.
Kim's positive spin on the Bank's procedures sounded like this:
And the good news about the Bank ... because we have safeguards in place, because we do auditing, because we're so careful at following our money, we can at least tell our own governors where our money is going, and it takes a lot to do that.
The truth is that the Bank may know what its loan funds are buying but it rarely knows what benefits those funds provide, if any. Despite years of talking about improving data and accountability, for example, information about the number of children who know how to read and write is only recently available ... and not as a result of the World Bank's support to education information systems.
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