Update on the World Bank’s Move Towards Greater Transparency
Ms. Isabel Guerrero,the Vice President for South Asia at the World Bank, recently gave an interviewwith Civil Society, which was reposted on the Bank’s website. Ms. Isabel Guerrero, Vice President for SouthAsia, discussed the Bank’s upcoming shift towards transparency set to kick offon July 1st of this year. AsI have noted in previous posts, this new policy moves the Bank from a system oflimited document disclosure to a more permissive system of limited exceptionsto document disclosure.
The interview givesinsight into the origins of the new policy and some of the questions left to beaddressed. The new policy is aprogression from original disclosure policy that was created in the 1980’s,which responds to pressure from inside and outside the Bank for greatertransparency. However, Ms. Guerrerostated that the Bank will amid to balance the push for transparency with theneed to protect the privacy of Bank employees and the financial privacy of Bankmember countries. Accordingly, there arethree categories of exceptions in the new policy: (1) personal staff emails,(2) the Bank’s internal project design debate, and (3) ongoing corruptioninvestigations.
SS