The World Bank is an international financial institution that provides loans to countries of the world for capital projects.
The World Bank was created out of the Bretton Woods agreement, 1944, as a result of many European and Asian countries needing financing to fund reconstruction efforts.
The IBRD and the International Development Association, IBRD’s concessional lending arm, are collectively known as the World Bank.
The World Bank is a component of the World Bank Group, which is part of the United Nations system
The World Bank's most recent stated goal is the End extreme poverty - reducing share of global population that lives in extreme poverty to 3 percent by 2030.
As of November 2018, the largest recipients of World Bank loans were India ($859 million in 2018) and China ($370 million in 2018), through loans from IBRD.
World Bank Group
The World Bank Group (WBG) is a family of five international organizations that make leveraged loans to developing countries. It is the largest and most well-known development bank in the world and is an observer at the United Nations Development Group.
The term "World Bank" generally refers to just the IBRD and IDA, whereas the term World Bank Group or WBG is used to refer to all five institutions collectively.
The World Bank Group consists of:
International Bank for Reconstruction and Development (IBRD), established in 1945, which provides debt financing on the basis of sovereign guarantees;
International Finance Corporation (IFC), established in 1956, which provides various forms of financing without sovereign guarantees, primarily to the private sector;
International Development Association (IDA), established in 1960, which provides concessional financing (interest-free loans or grants), usually with sovereign guarantees;
International Centre for Settlement of Investment Disputes (ICSID), established in 1965, which works with governments to reduce investment risk;
Multilateral Investment Guarantee Agency (MIGA), established in 1988, which provides insurance against certain types of risk, including political risk, primarily to the private sector.
International Bank for Reconstruction and Development (IBRD)
The International Bank of Reconstruction and Development (IBRD) is a development bank, administered by the World Bank that offers financial products and policy advice countries aiming to reduce poverty and promote sustainable development. It is headquartered in Washington, D.C.
The IBRD was founded in anticipation of the end of World War II, during the Bretton Woods Conference of 1944, a gathering of the 44 Allied Nations of the Second World War meant to establish the post-war global financial order. Along with establishing a new global monetary policy regime, the Bretton Woods Conference was also where the International Monetary Fund and the IBRD were formed.
The International Bank of Reconstruction and Development is a cooperative owned by 189 member countries
Today, the IBRD focuses its services on middle-income countries, or countries where the per capita income ranges from $1,026 to $12,475 per year. These countries, like Indonesia, India, and Thailand, are often home to fast-growing economies that attract a lot of foreign investment and large infrastructure building projects.
