World Bank Group

The World Bank Group is a group of five international institutions that provides financing, expertise, and dispute-settlement services to support development and reduce poverty.

International Bank for Reconstruction and Development: An institution that lends to middle-income and creditworthy lower-income governments and provides development advice. It is the Group’s main lending institution for governments able to borrow on near-market terms.
World Bank lending: Financing by the World Bank’s two lending institutions for government programs and development projects. It channels the Group’s sovereign financing through loans, credits, and grants.
Bretton Woods Conference: A 1944 conference at which delegates designed the International Monetary Fund and the International Bank for Reconstruction and Development. It established the institutional blueprint from which the World Bank Group began.
Structural adjustment: Economic reforms often required or encouraged by international lenders as conditions for financing. World Bank adjustment lending made the Group a central actor in debates over reform conditionality.
International Monetary Fund: An international institution that promotes monetary cooperation and provides temporary financing to countries facing balance-of-payments problems. Its focus on monetary stability and external financing differs from the Group’s development mandate.
International Development Association: An institution that provides grants and concessional financing to the world’s poorest countries. It extends the Group’s support to countries unable to borrow affordably on commercial terms.
Concessional finance: Financing offered on terms more generous than market terms, such as low interest rates or long repayment periods. IDA uses it to ease the debt burden on eligible low-income countries.
International Bank for Reconstruction and Development Articles of Agreement: The founding treaty that sets out the IBRD’s purposes, governance, membership, and powers. These Articles created the Group’s first institution and define its original mandate.
Heavily Indebted Poor Countries Initiative: A multilateral program launched in 1996 to reduce unsustainable debt burdens in eligible poor countries. The Bank helped design and implement a major debt-relief effort for its borrowers.
Asian Development Bank: A regional multilateral development bank that finances development in Asia and the Pacific. It pursues similar development goals within a regional membership and geographic focus.

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