Demand for World Bank Group Financing Rises to Nearly $64 billion in Fiscal Year 2018

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“Demand continues to rise for our finance, expertise, and innovation,” World Bank Group President Jim Yong Kim said. “In the last fiscal year, our shareholders improved our ability to meet that demand with a historic $13 billion capital increase, which will help us address the most critical challenges of our time, and help our client countries – and their people – reach their highest aspirations. The capital increase was a strong vote of confidence in the World Bank Group’s staff, who work tirelessly across the globe to end extreme poverty and boost shared prosperity.”

Human Development lending—which spans education; health, nutrition and population; social protection; and jobs—increased by a record 74 percent. Its share in the World Bank’s total commitments for the year saw an unprecedented increase, going to 25.2 percent in FY18 from 16 percent in FY17. This significant shift demonstrates increased demand by countries to invest in building human capital, reflecting the priorities of the Human Capital Project, an ambitious effort to accelerate more and better investments in people that was announced at the World Bank Group’s 2017 Annual Meetings.

In addition, in fiscal year 2018, 32.1 percent of World Bank Group financing was climate change-related – already exceeding a target set in 2015 of 28 percent of lending volume to be climate-related by 2020.

With a record-setting $20.5 billion in climate-related financing delivered in the last fiscal year, the World Bank Group continues to step up its support to developing countries to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and build resilience to increasingly intense climate change impacts.

A record 46 percent of FY18 World Bank (IBRD/IDA) agriculture lending will deliver climate co-benefits, making good on the potential of agriculture to contribute to the climate solutions that are so urgently needed. Total lending in the Food and Agriculture Global Practice also rose sharply to $4.65 billion in new IDA/IBRD commitments, up from $2.5 billion in FY17.

Support to countries from the International Bank for Reconstruction and Development (IBRD), which provides financing, risk management products, and other financial services to members, rose to $23 billion in FY18, up from $22.6 billion in the previous fiscal year. IBRD mobilized this financing for development through innovative capital market instruments; in fiscal 2018, IBRD issued $36 billion in bonds in 27 currencies to fund sustainable development activities in middle-income countries.

In addition, IBRD bonds raise investor awareness for the role of the private sector in achieving the Sustainable Development Goals, with specific bonds to highlight SDGs such as Good Health and Well Being, Gender Equality, Responsible Consumption and Production, and Climate Action.

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