From the presentation "How We Got to Where We Are -- the World Bank's First 50 Years" by Chuck Ziegler.

First loan to Chile First loan the Bank made to a country in Latin America First development loan by the Bank

Loan 0005 - Chile

Loan 0012 - Mexico

First loan to Mexico was announced: Loan 0012 – Electric Power Development Project Bank’s first sector loan

First Public Offering Outside the United States, May 17, 1951

• London banking firm of Baring Bros. and Co., Ltd. Announces preparation of public offering of 5,000,000 pounds sterling issue of 3.5 percent, 20-year Bank bonds

First Bank Reorganization, September 22,1952

• Operational activities reorganized on geographical rather than functional basis
• Three Area Departments of Operations are created:
  1. Asia and Middle East
  2. Europe, Africa, and Australasia
  3. Western Hemisphere.
• Also created are the Department of Technical Operations, the Economic Staff, and the Technical Assistance and Liaison Staff

First IFC Investment, June 20, 1957

• IFC makes its first investment: $2 million in Siemens do Brasil to expand manufacturing

First Aid Consortium, August 25, 1958

• In the wake of a deterioration in India’s balance of payments, the first meeting of the India aid consortium takes place in Washington, with attendance by representatives of the governments of Canada, Germany, Japan, the United Kingdom and the United States
• Establishment of Indian Consortium, and the subsequent one for Pakistan (1960), was the beginning of the various aid groups and consortia:

"India and Pakistan are the only two countries for which the Bank has organized consortia. Originally, consortia differed from consultative groups in that their members made specific pledges of aid during meetings to meet the targets specified in the recipient country’s development plan. Today this no longer occurs, although the principal donors are usually willing to make fairly definite statement s about their intentions. During consultative group meetings, on the other hand, the Bank and the other participants usually describe their aid plans in more general terms."

[Historical Dictionary of the World Bank, Anne C.M. Salda, pp. 57-58.]

 

First IBRD Capital Increase, September 16, 1959

• Bank authorized capital increased from $10 billion to $21 billion
• First of several subsequent capital increases

The Bank’s First Computer, November 1960

• The Bank opens a Data Processing Center with IBM equipment (IBM 407 accounting machine)
• Mr. J. Albert Schaech in the Treasurer’s Department was in charge
• His first job was to transfer the entries on the Bank’s financial books to a punch card system of accounting
• The new IBM equipment permits showing borrowers their statements of accounts in a much more concise and presentable form

  Operator preparing keypunch cards for data input to IBM 407 accounting machine

  Al Schaech (l) and Robert Stewart (r) with IBM 407 accounting machine

• Also marked the first funding for Tunisia: Credit 0029

First Female Executive Director, November 1, 1962

• Alice A. Brun of Denmark becomes the first female Executive Director

First Consultative Group, January 1963

• First meeting of a Bank-organized consultative group, for Colombia

• The first class of the Junior Professional Recruitment and Training Program--what would become the Young Professionals Program--arrives at the Bank.

"The object of this whole exercise was to feed into the staff the most promising persons who could be recruited in their 20s on a competitive basis, and to provide a launching pad from which they could demonstrate potential [to succeed in the Bank]…"The staff’s general age-level was creeping upward. A good many retirements could be seen about a decade away and there were very few youngsters in the professional ranks. It looked like a job of reforestation was needed before the big trees fell."

--Richard W. Van Wagenen in "Bank Notes", October 1973

First IDA Replenishment, June 29, 1964

• The first IDA Replenishment became effective June 29, 1964 as eighteen governments agreed to provide $753 million
• For the first time, World Bank commitments exceeded $1 billion, in FY65

Bank's Commitments Exceed $2 Billion, June 30, 1970

• The Bank Group’s commitments for the fiscal year 1970 exceeded $2 billion for the first time

First loan for pollution control  is signed, June 21, 1971

June 30, 1972

• The Bank reaches the goal set by President McNamara to provide twice as much assistance in fiscal 1969-73 as it did in the previous five years. 
• For the first time lending for agriculture exceeds that of any other sector
  

First project audit reports, October 31, 1972

• Highway, power and telecommunications lending to Costa Rica

• Shirley Boskey is appointed Director of the International Relations Department, becoming the first female Department Director (served 1975-1983)

SHIRLEY BOSKEY

• A lawyer, who came from U.S. Department of the Interior
• Joined the Bank in 1954
• Helped to draft charters of IFC and IDA; helped to set up EDI
• Spent 29 years in the same department, through three changes in the department’s name
• President of the 1818 Society from 1987-1995

First individual computers, June 1978

"Two Bank staff members [have] built their own mini-computers, three others have bought them assembled, off-the-shelf; and dozens of others are on the verge of buying one, or are looking for information on mini-computers… [These mini-computers] offer from 4,000 to 65,000 words of directly addressable memory."

-- "Even You Can Learn to "Talk" to a Computer…" by Guido J. Deboeck, Bank Notes, June 1978, p. 2

 

Bank Group commitments exceed $10 billion for the first time, June 30, 1979

First Structural Adjustment Loan (SAL) is approved, March 25, 1980

• Loan 1818 was to Turkey, for $200 million.
• Project was in support of structural adjustment policies adopted, or to be adopted, by Turkey

First Attitude Survey, January 11, 1982

• President A.W. Clausen announced that the first Attitude Survey would be undertaken in the World Bank

First Bank President visits the Soviet Union, November 14, 1990

• President Barber B. Conable travels to Moscow

Foundations  Affiliates   Buildings

Copyright, 2004, The International Bank for Reconstruction and Development/The World Bank