Institutional Set-up
The World Bank Group is one of the world leading institutions in the combat against poverty and improvement of living standards for people in developing countries. The World Bank is a development bank providing loans, advisory support for policies, technical assistance and services focused on the knowledge exchange. The World Bank is not a "bank’ in the usual sense of the word. It is one of the specialised United Nations agencies with 184 member-states. Together with other part of the development community, the World Bank focuses its efforts on implementation of the Millennium Development Goals, agreed by the UN members in 2000 and focused on sustainable reduction of the poverty (www.worldbank.org).
The World Bank Group (www.worldbankgroup.org) consists of five closely related institutions
The term ‘World Bank’ is particularly related to IBRD and IDA,
The World Bank is owned by 184 member-states as shareholders. The number of shares possibly owned by each country is based roughly on the size of its economy. The government shareholders in the World Bank are represented by the Board of Governors, as a main policy-maker, which delegates specific duties to 24 Executive Directors.
The President of the Bank chairs the meetings of the Board of Directors and is responsible for the total management with the Bank. Within the framework of its activities in the world, the Bank has three types of offices.
The World Bank Action Plan establishing the programmes and priorities in particular country is known as Country Assistance Strategy (CAS) or Country Partnership Strategy (CPS). The documents, in general, cover a period from 3 to 4 years, and the government and the representatives of civil society participate in their preparation. The Bank assistance plans for low-income countries are based on Poverty Reduction Strategy Papers (PRSP). Macroeconomic, structural and social policies are described in the documents as well as the country programmes in order to promote growth and poverty reduction, as well as the needs of foreign funding.
During the preparation and implementation of development strategies, the Bank follows four principles.
The Bank has two basic types of lending instruments:
Investment loans are long-term focused (5 to 10 years) for funding goods, activities and services in order to support the economic and social development projects in a vast range of sectors.
• Development policy loans are short-term focused (1 to 3 years) and provide prompt foreign funding in the support of the policy and institutional reforms.
The World Bank Group offers limited number of grants for facilitation of the development projects. There is a broad line of mechanisms through which the Bank allocates grants: Development market conditions, Development grant Facilitation, Grants for civil organisations, Global Environmental Fund (GEF), Infodev, Japan Policy and Human Resources Development Fund Project (PHRD), Japan Social Sector Development Fund, Multilateral Fund for Implementation of the Montreal protocol, Small Grants Programme, Official Co-financing and Trust Funds.
The World Bank develops and funds project at the request of the government of the country concerned. Negotiations follow the project feasibility and loan condition assessments. The loan proposals or credit proposals for those projects are than submitted to the World Bank Board of Executive Directors for approval. The loan takes effect after the approval by the Parliament or the Government of the country concerned. It is important to indicate that the projects are implemented by appropriate state institution called Implementation Agency- Implementer, responsible for all aspects of the project implementation such as consultants’ hiring and selection. The World Bank project cycle includes the following: Country Assistance Strategy, identification phase, preparatory phase, assessment phase, negotiations and approval phase, implementation and supervision phase, implementation completed report and evaluation phase.
World Bank in the Republic of Macedonia
For more information on completed and underway projects, please visit the following link: www.sep.gov.mk/cdad
SEA contact persons:
Jovan Despotovski
jovan.despotovski@sep.gov.mk
Phone: (02) 32 00 138
Sofce Zafirovska
e-mail: sofce.zafirovska@sep.gov.mk
phone: 3200 243