New World Bank Strategy Document "Safe, clean and affordable: Transport for development"

Within hours of launching the World Bank’s strategy document, “Safe, Clean and Affordable: Transport For Development”, the bank’s new global transport chief, Marc Juhel, was travelling from Washington to London, where he presented the report to the ITF (download the strategy document and Marc Juhel's presentation below). He stayed for the whole day, allowing leaders from key affiliates in Africa, Asia, Latin America and the Middle East to question him about the bank’s plans and to seek assurances about how transport workers would be treated as the the proposals were implemented. 

World Bank Seminars, 22 - 23 May, 2008 - London, UK

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The World Bank is a global institution mainly owned by the rich country governments with great power over the economic and social development of poorer ones. Based in Washington, D.C., and a sister organisation of the International Monetary Fund (IMF), it wields its power mainly by attaching conditions to its project loans.

Transport projects account for about 15 per cent of the World Bank's US$23 billion annual lending, and many have led to privatisation in rail, ports and aviation. The Bank often pushes job cuts and other ways of cutting labour costs, such as the 85,000 retrenchments in Argentine railways, which it financed.

The World Bank is a major focus of all ITF sections, regions and departments. The ITF Education Department has also developed a project to build understanding and develop strategies about global transport restructuring and the role of international institutions in driving it. For more about the project, and the materials it has already produced in English, French and Spanish, please follow the page link below.