Millennium Development Goals and World Bank Corporate Strategy in the Infrastructure and Energy Sector

The Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) are widely accepted by the development community, including the World Bank, as a framework for measuring development progress. Stemming from the agreements and resolutions of world conferences organized by the United Nations over the past decade, the MDGs promote poverty reduction and human development as the key to sustaining social and economic progress. Eight MDGs have been identified with targeted achievement of measurable benchmarks and goals by the year 2015.	Â
In this regard, the ECA Region has a large unfinished development agenda. Promoting the sustainable management of global public goods such as water and energy are integral to this agenda. To help realize these goals, the World Bank Group pursues the following four major business lines in the infrastructure and energy sector of the ECA Region across all developing and transition countries: 1. Improve social conditions by facilitating access to modern services and fuels concentrating on cost recovery matched with well-designed social protection systems improving the quality of energy and infrastructure services supplied to low-income households, schools and hospitals ensuring that energy and infrastructure subsidies are targeted at and reach the poor promoting energy efficient/less polluting end-use technologie increasing the proportion of the population with sustainable access to water sources and sanitation	  (PFD 355 KB) News Update: Are the Millennium Development Goals Out of Reach in Europe and Central Asia? September 23, 2005

2. Promote efficient and transparent government by

• rationalizing energy and infrastructure taxes
• replacing public investments by private ones when appropriate
• continuing reform and restructuring even where privatization may not be feasible in the short-term
• managing risks associated with contingent public liabilities
• monitoring closely technical, managerial and financial performance in response to the widespread demand for accountability
• closing loss-making coal mines and oil refineries and financing restructuring costs that fall on government budgets
• eliminating operating subsidies to state-owned energy and infrastructure enterprises and boosting budget revenues through commercialization
• reduce systematically the infrastructure and energy contributions to quasi-fiscal deficit
• reform customs and cross-border trade and transportation policies and programs

3. Improve investment climate by

• creating objective, transparent, non-discriminatory regulatory mechanisms
• introducing and expanding competition and cross-border trade
• divesting assets to strategic investors in a socially responsible and corruption-free way
• catalyzing private partnerships and investments
• moving to business-driven privatization strategies
• strengthening the voice of consumers and communities
• facilitating public-private partnerships and private provision of infrastructure and energy services

4. Protect global public goods by

• promoting cleaner transport fuels and switching from coal to gas
• improving access to cleaner and safer water supplies
• facilitating environmentally sustainable extraction, production, processing, transport and distribution of oil, gas and coal
• strengthening environmental management capacity in the energy and infrastructure sector
• removing market barriers to renewables and energy efficiency investments
• reducing road accidents and road vehicles' emissions of lead
• reducing gas flaring and facilitating carbon trading and joint investments to reduce GHG emissions