Membership Information

The organizations that make up the World Bank Group are owned by the governments of member nations. The World Bank is therefore a cooperative owned by 184 countries, nearly all the countries in the world. All members are represented at the Bank’s Board which has the ultimate decision-making power on all matters, be they policy, financial, or membership issues. So Serbia and Montenegro, too, owns the World Bank.

The biggest number of votes (and shares) are in the possession of the members of the European Union: 25.64 % of all votes (without new members). United States of America has 16.41 % of votes; Japan 7.87 %; Saudi Arabia, India, Russia, China and Canada 2.79 % each. Serbia and Montenegro has 1,847 votes, representing 0.11 % of the total and 1,597 shares, representing 0.10 % of the total. These numbers are so small that they can’t even be seen on the chart bellow. As for the other SFRY successor countries the distribution of votes is as follows: Bosnia and Herzegovina has 0.05 % of votes, Croatia – 0.16 %; FYR of Macedonia – 0.04 % and Slovenia – 0.09 %. In 1991 SFRY had 4,381 shares (0.38 % of the total) and 4,631 votes (0.39 % of the total).

Membership and subscription

 

As part of what was then known as the Federal Peoples Republic of Yugoslavia, Serbia and Montenegro, – together with Bosnia and Herzegovina, Croatia, Slovenia and the former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia – was a founder member of the World Bank. The Federal Peoples Republic of Yugoslavia later became the Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia. After the brake up of the Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia (SFRY) the membership of the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia (as Serbia and Montenegro was named at the time) was suspended in February 1993. On February 4, 2003 the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia changed its name into Serbia and Montenegro.

On May 8, 2001 the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia succeeded to the membership of the former Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia (the other four successors to the SFRY - Bosnia-Herzegovina, Croatia, Slovenia and the former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia - have also become members of IBRD). The succession was made retroactive to February 25, 1993. As part of the membership package, Executive Directors approved a plan for clearing FRY's old IBRD’s arrears, and temporary exceptional eligibility to receive interest-free credits from IDA, the World Bank's concessional lending arm. A three year IDA envelope for FRY of up to US$540 million was authorized on a temporary and exceptional basis, with actual lending to depend upon performance against agreed performance benchmarks. It was envisaged that up to eighty percent of the program could support policy based lending, which would put money into the Serbian and Montenegrin budget linked to policy reforms.

During the first stage of World Bank assistance to FRY, in view of its urgent needs and concurrent with the arrears clearance process, the Bank established a Trust Fund for FRY (TFFRY) using an additional US$30 million of IBRD surplus net income to provide grant financing for selected priority activities.