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Independent research & practical ideas for global prosperity
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Independent research & practical ideas for global prosperity
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 Ben Leo is a Visiting Fellow at the Center for Global Development. Full BioG-20 Endorses World Food Programme HedgingJune 29, 2011By Ben Leo in Food Aid, Food Crisis Tags: G-20, World Food Program
This post is co-authored by Vijaya Ramachandran Last week, the G-20 agriculture ministers meeting in Paris issued a communiqué calling for the World Food Programme to develop hedging strategies to purchase food. In a little-noticed section towards the end of a 24-page document, the ministers stated:
Comment »In Memory of Stephen EverhartJune 24, 2011By Ben Leo in Global Development
This is a joint post with Todd Moss We are saddened today with the news that our friend and colleague Stephen Everhart was killed yesterday in Baghdad. Steve was in Iraq working to introduce a new university business curriculum, part of his life’s work to expand economic opportunities around the world. We both got to know Steve while he was at OPIC where he helped to invest billions of dollars in the next generation of emerging markets. After leaving government, Steve went to the business school at the American University in Cairo, and was named Associate Dean in 2009. He had previously worked at the IFC and on Wall Street. Our condolences go out to Steve’s family and three children. He will be remembered for his passion and his humor—and his mission. 3 Comments »With Success, IDA Must Begin to Reinvent ItselfMarch 24, 2011By Ben Leo in Global Development, World Bank Tags: IDA, World Bank
Fast forward to the year 2025. IDA will begin negotiating its 21st Replenishment Agreement. As with every other replenishment since 1960, donor countries will sit around a table and haggle over what sectors to promote, how to measure IDA’s impact, and how to allocate its resources. And, they will be fiercely negotiating how much money to put in IDA’s hands. Nothing will have changed. That’s just how these negotiations work. However, there will be one huge difference this time around. IDA will be operating in a vastly different world. A world where its existing way of doing business may no longer make sense. According to new research by Todd Moss and me, IDA’s client base is projected to change dramatically over the coming years. By 2025, there could be only 30 poor country clients left – down from roughly 70 now. There would be 1 billion people living in these countries – instead of 3 billion living in current IDA-eligible countries. Overall, the remaining clients will be overwhelmingly African – with only a few countries scattered across other regions. All of this will be driven by an expected, and much anticipated, wave of countries graduating from cheap IDA loans to borrowing from the international credit markets. Unlike other organizations, a successful IDA fundamentally means that it eventually will put itself out of business. Read More… Comment »Export Promotion Is Not the Same As Building Markets AbroadFebruary 18, 2011By Ben Leo in Global Development Tags: OPIC, Trade, USTR
Last month, President Obama laid out a bold pledge to consolidate and reorganize the federal government in support of a more competitive America. If you missed that line, it was right before his joke about salmon being regulated by different agencies depending on whether they’re in fresh or salt water. While President Obama specifically referenced a dozen agencies working on export promotion, it’s difficult to gauge whether the consolidation wave will touch all of them or just a lucky few. Those talks are happening behind closed doors. So, we’re left trying to read the tea leaves. Based on early indications, it sounds like there may be confusion over a basic, yet fundamental issue – understanding the difference between export promotion and development mandates. Read More… Comment »How Quickly Are Countries Progressing Toward the MDGs? A New Interactive Web-App from CGDJanuary 20, 2011By Ben Leo in Global Development Tags: Millennium Development Goals
This is a joint post with Ross Thuotte. The United Nations recently published the 2011 World Economic Situation and Prospects report, which asserts that Sub-Saharan Africa, and possibly parts of South Asia, are off-track for halving extreme poverty levels by 2015. This must sound alarmingly dire and discouraging for those laboring long and hard to reduce poverty rates in countries within these regions. But this picture was painted by a highly simplistic brush. Despite doomsday generalizations, almost two-thirds of Sub-Saharan African countries are on-track (or nearly on-track) to halve poverty during the MDG period (1990-2015). A few of them – such as Ghana, Uganda, and Burkina Faso – are on the short-list of the highest-performing countries. These so-called MDG Trailblazers (both in Africa and beyond) are the subject of my recent CGD working paper. Based on popular requests, we have launched a new interactive MDG web tool that visually represents each individual country’s progress towards the highly ambitious MDG targets. Read More… 1 Comment »Sudan’s Bumpy Debt Road Will Run Through Where? Vienna?December 14, 2010By Ben Leo in Global Development, News Tags: Debt Relief
This is a joint post with Ross Thuotte. Sudan’s crippling debt burden can be compared to an enormous onion – the story gets more and more complex as you begin peeling back the various layers. Yesterday, we wrote about Sudan’s two largest creditors – Kuwait and Saudi Arabia. But, there are countless other surprises beneath the surface. Here are three more: Austria, Denmark, and Belgium. These are not countries that one would automatically associate with Sudan. But, they are some of its largest creditors – collectively holding roughly $4.5 billion in claims. Read More… 1 Comment »A Global Fund Equity Index? What An Intriguing Idea!December 13, 2010By Ben Leo in Global Development Tags: Global Fund
Today, the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria announced an intriguing new partnership with the Dow Jones Indexes – a new line of stock market indices. These new indices – led by the flagship Dow Jones Global Fund 50 Index – will measure the performance of the largest companies worldwide that support the Global Fund’s mission. They have already concluded licensing arrangements with Deutsche Bank and the National Bank of Abu Dhabi to market the indices with investors. And a portion of the indices’ royalties will help fund the Global Fund’s ongoing programs. This won’t generate huge sums of money, but what an interesting win-win idea for generating interest in the Global Fund’s programs while enhancing the brand quality of the listed companies’. And who knows, maybe the Global Fund 50 Index will take off and pave the way for other development-friendly stock market indices. Comment »Who Are Sudan’s Two Biggest Creditors? And Why Is It Something to Worry About?December 13, 2010By Ben Leo in Global Development Tags: Debt Relief
This is a joint post with Ross Thuotte. Two countries alone hold over 25 percent of Sudan’s crippling $35 billion debt burden. I’ll give you three guesses at who they might be. China? United States? France? All would be reasonable choices. But, they also would be wrong. In fact, Sudan’s two largest creditors are Kuwait and Saudi Arabia. Sudan owes the Kuwaiti government roughly $6 billion and the Saudi Government over $3 billion. Despite a flurry of recent loans, China is only number five on the list. These rankings represent more than monetary values owed – rather, they illustrate who will have the most important voices around the debt workout table when the time comes. Read More… 2 Comments »U.S. Fiscal Commission Suggests Killing OPIC – The Government’s Cash CowNovember 11, 2010By Ben Leo in Global Development Tags: OPIC
Yesterday, the two Fiscal Commission co-chairs, Alan Simpson and Erskine Bowles, put forward their long-awaited draft proposal. I was looking forward to seeing bold, creative ideas for getting America’s fiscal house in order. I wasn’t disappointed. They leave no sacred public cow untouched. However, one thing nearly made me fall out of the chair. These seemingly well-informed insiders want to shut down the Overseas Private Investment Corporation (or OPIC). They argue that OPIC – which provides market-based financing and insurance for U.S. businesses investing in poorer countries – actually provides no net public benefit to the United States. Read More… 1 Comment »Replenishing IDA’s Coffers: Time to Get CreativeOctober 12, 2010By Ben Leo in Global Development Tags: African Development Bank, IBRD, IDA, World Bank
This afternoon, the World Bank’s shareholders will wrap up their latest discussions about replenishing IDA’s financial coffers – which provides cheap loans and grants to the world’s poorest countries. The largest donors seem more or less content with the new package of policy reforms. They have agreed that IDA should focus even more on evaluating project effectiveness and have greater flexibility in dealing with the most fragile countries. Nothing particularly earth shattering – and definitely nothing sexy (even for us propeller heads). Then again, IDA is already one of the most effective and efficient development institutions worldwide. The key remaining question is not the what, but how much. How much will donor governments reach into their shrinking wallets to finance IDA’s health, infrastructure, and agriculture projects? And, how much financial creativity have donors and World Bank management brought to the table? The answers are mixed. Read More… Comment »Sudan – Southern Secession, Oil, and Debt ReliefSeptember 17, 2010By Ben Leo in Global Development, Oil Tags: Debt Relief, Oil, Sudan
This post also appeared on the Huffington Post. Next week, President Obama, UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon, and other global leaders will meet with Sudanese leadership to discuss the upcoming referendum. The stakes are huge. In January, southern Sudanese will vote on whether to secede and launch a new, independent country. It’s hard to imagine them not supporting the breakaway vote given their decades’ long fight for independence. Roughly 2 million people died in that struggle. The multi-million dollar question is – what will Khartoum do? Will they let the referendum happen? Will it be fair and transparent? If so, will they respect the results? The meeting next week will grapple with these critical issues. Clearly, Khartoum has a lot of lose. Read More… Comment »Liberia’s Debt Relief PartyJuly 2, 2010By Ben Leo in Global Development Tags: Debt Relief, IMF, Liberia, World Bank
This week, Liberians celebrated in the streets – faces painted, drums blaring, and dancing with abandon. They’re not rejoicing over some recent triumph by the Liberian soccer team or a local festival. The streets of Monrovia were overflowing because of debt relief. That’s right, debt relief. On Tuesday, Liberia secured nearly $5 billion in irrevocable debt relief from the World Bank, IMF, African Development Bank, and bilateral creditors. It’s a massive sum – the equivalent of roughly $1200 for every man, woman, and child in Liberia. As President Ellen Johnson Sirleaf stated, “today, ladies and gentlemen, is a day for us, as Liberians, to celebrate.” And celebrate they did. And so should we. Read More… 5 Comments »A Novel Approach to Mobilizing SME Capital—Let the Private Sector LeadJune 28, 2010By Ben Leo in Global Development Tags: Ashoka, G-20
No surprises on the G-20 front. Deficits and financial sector reform dominated the headlines coming out of last weekend’s Toronto Summit. Development appeared largely as an afterthought. Even though my heart and head are hopelessly hitched to development policy, I think the focus was about right. Ensuring robust recoveries in G-20 nations will do more to support growth in poor countries than endlessly rehashed debates about global aid flows. Leave that for the UN MDG Summit this September. That said, the G-20 did do something small worth highlighting. Tucked away unobtrusively in the communiqué, the G-20 formally launched an initiative that will identify new ways of catalyzing finance for small and medium enterprises (SMEs) in developing countries. Read More… 1 Comment »Kimberley Process Keeps the Door Open for Zimbabwean DemocracyJune 24, 2010By Ben Leo in Global Development Tags: Democracy, Kimberley Process
This blog post also appeared on the Huffington Post. For four days, forty-nine Kimberley Process members were holed up in Tel Aviv contemplating Zimbabwe’s future. Countries like South Africa, Israel, the European Community, and the United States were deadlocked over whether to continue their existing export ban on Zimbabwean diamonds. What’s at stake is much bigger than diamonds. It’s about corruption, repression, and freedom. A vote to rescind the diamond ban could have slammed the door shut on a truly democratic future for Zimbabwe’s people. It would have been a massive coup for Robert Mugabe and his security force allies. And a death blow to those who have sacrificed everything for change. Thankfully, the Kimberley Process members sided with the forces of democracy. The diamond ban will stay. Read More… Comment »Unlocking $7.5 Billion for the World’s Poorest CountriesJune 14, 2010By Ben Leo in Global Development
According to the World Bank, the global economic crisis may force donor governments to slash their aid budgets by up to 25 percent. If true, that would translate into a draconian cut of $30 billion. Red ink as far as the eye can see, long unemployment lines, and continued uneasiness in Europe could force donors to unsheathe the budget axe. Even if the World Bank is wrong, the years of historic aid increases are long gone. This couldn’t come at a worse time for developing countries and multilateral aid agencies. Comment »Red Flags and Red Lights for IMF Lending to HIPCsMay 20, 2010By Ben Leo in Global Development Tags: HIPC, IMF, World Bank
This blog entry also appeared on the Huffington Post. As the global economic crisis spread throughout the developing world in 2008, some of us waited for the next unfortunate phase for poor, debt vulnerable countries – the resumption of massive IMF lending. This is a movie that we’ve seen many times before. And we know the ending. Sadly, it’s less of a Hollywood ending and more of a Parisian tragedy. It didn’t take long to get the IMF engine roaring. Read More… 2 Comments »
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