August 21, 2006—Information about World Bank loans previously available only to borrowing countries is now public and online at a new website, Country Aggregate Reports. The new site details World Bank financing for countries including loans, credits, and grants, disbursements and repayments, types of financial instruments, and lending by sector. And it combines once-restricted financial details with information about projects and sector lending that was previously available but scattered on the World Bank portal, says Irena Kibickaja, a member of the Bank’s technical team that spent the last year working on the project. The idea is to create a one-stop shop for information on a country’s loan portfolio and Bank projects, she says. The Bank launched Country Aggregate Reports in July in response to requests from national governments, researchers, international organizations, and civil society to consolidate information on World Bank lending and other operations by country and following the World Bank public disclosure policy. Now, the Bank will update lending portfolio information regularly on the site, Kibickaja says. The Country Aggregate Reports site is based on Client Connection, a secure Bank website that provides information to national governments on the status of the World Bank lending to their respective countries. Country Aggregate Reports includes: - Lending summary—tables showing the status of loans, credits, and grants
- Lending net flows—graphs comparing the amount disbursed by the active projects in a country for a given fiscal year with the amount repaid that same year
- Lending volume—graphs showing total commitment amount of projects approved in a fiscal year
- Lending by sector—pie charts showing number of projects in sectors such as education or transportation, and the amounts committed in millions of US dollars in a given fiscal year
- Active projects—list of projects that are disbursing funds and have not yet closed within a given year
- Proposed projects—list of projects that are being prepared but have not yet been approved by the Bank
In addition, the site will soon include detailed financial information on loans, credits, and grants associated with each Bank project in each country, and a Debt Management section that reveals the status of a country’s debt. The area’s lending summary page provides a historical and current summary statement of the number of loans, credits, and grants in various stages of their lifecycle—in US dollar equivalent amounts—on the last day of the month. The page also specifies various loan types in a country’s portfolio, such as IDA (International Development Association Credits), or IBRD (International Bank for Reconstruction and Development). A key to loan types used in World Bank lending is available by clicking the “About this Page” link in the upper right corner of the page. “About this Page” also explains loan/credit/grant terms in the summary, such as borrower obligation (estimated outstanding balance for the loan/credit as of today in US dollars equivalent) and original principal (original US dollar equivalent amount of the loan as calculated using the loan approval date as the exchange rate date). |
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