myanmar tourism bank

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Myanmar’s tourism gets a boost

Myanma Tourism Development Public Company Limited

MTF is developing the Tada Oo Project through the Myanma Tourism Development Public Company. This is a new town development 30 minutes from Mandalay, the second largest commercial city in Myanmar. The project will feature areas for residential, commercial and… See More

Myanma Tourism Bank

Myanma Tourism Bank also known as MTB bank, was granted a commercial banking license in 2018 under the Financial Institution Law (FI Law) by the Central Bank of Myanmar. Our head office is located in Sule Pagoda Road,Kyouktada Township,  Yangon and … See More

No.4, Corner of Merchant Road & Sandaku Road, 3 Ward, Botahtaung Township, Yangon, Myanmar. Tel : +95 1 203861, 203862 Fax : +95 1 203863 Email : [email protected]

Int'l volunteers

Other tourism sites.

www.tourism.gov.mm www.myanmar.travel www.visitmyanmar.cn

Hotline : +959 682 682 682

+959 682 682 682

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Internet Banking

MTB Internet Banking is a self-service banking system whereby customers of the bank are able to secure and safe banking transactions anytime, anywhere without paying services a visit to the bank. MTB’s Customers can manage their real-time banking processes via their own PCs, Laptops, Smartphones or other electronic devices with access to the internet without travelling to the bank by themselves.

Financial management

Myannma Tourism Bank’s customers can manage all the financial transactions of either related or corporate accounts.

Remittance via Internet Banking

Myanma Tourism Bank offers its to customers transfer their funds easily by typing the right amount of funds they want to transfer via Current Account, Saving Account and Call Account without bearing any extra charges. 

Avaiable Users to Internet Banking Services

Internet banking services are provided to individuals, Private companies, Organizations and Associations.

Requirements to apply Internet Banking

Requirements to apply Internet Banking are as follows:

• The user respective bank account is needed to open for Internet Banking services
• User’s email account is required to operate Internet Banking
• Active Internet access, Browsers, (Firefox, Chrome.,etc.) and any electronic device (Such as Laptop, PC, Smartphone or tablets) are also required.

Benefits using Internet Banking

• Convenience : Ease of using banking processes and services real-time online without a personal visit to the physical branch.
• Liability : MTB’s customers can use all the banking services without any concern because MTB protects customers’ accounts from being lost or stolen by using authenticated security systems.
• Effectiveness : Real-time banking transactions.
• Reassurance : MTB’s customers can sparethe of time and physical fatigue as they can make their banking services easily anytime and anywhere.

Which customers can use Myanma Tourism Bank’s Internet Banking services?

Individuals, Private companies, organizations and associations can use the Internet banking services.

How can one apply for Myanma Tourism Bank’s Internet Banking service?

You must take a visit to the nearest branch of Myanma Tourism Bank to apply for the Internet Banking service.

Which account types can utilize Myanma Tourism Bank’s Internet Banking service?

The account types that can use Myanma Tourism Bank’s Internet Banking service are:

• Saving Account
• Call Deposit Account
• Current Account 

Which functions or services can be provided by with Myanma Tourism Bank’s Internet Banking?

• MTB bank to MTB bank Account transfer
• Checking account balance and information anytime, anywhere
• Mobile Top-Up

What is the maximum amount limitation per day or per transaction for Own Account Transfer or Internal Transfer (for all account types)?

- Please check the following table!

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Myanmar tourism bank eyes lending k20 million to smes.

Zin Thu Tun/Myanmar Business Today

Tourist arrivals in Myanmar between January and September topped 3.1 million, representing an increase of 600,000 tourists over the same period last year. Along with the rise in tourist arrivals, the number of small and medium-sized tour companies in Myanmar’s recently opened up market also increased.

But like SMEs in other industries, tour companies have limited access to financial services.

To cater to their needs, Myanmar Tourism Bank in cooperation with the MSME Development Committee introduced a new product in November with the goal of providing up to K20 million in loans to tour companies who are members of the Myanmar Tourism Association (MTA).

“We do not limit the number [of loans] as we plan to provide funding to all MTA members,” said U Andrew Khant, Deputy Managing Director of Myanmar Tourism Bank.

The MTA has around 400 members, for whom the bank has earmarked K700 million. Credit Guarantee Insurance loans, which require no collateral or security, are available to MTA members with one condition: They must have been in business for at least three years. Myanmar Tourism Bank will consider lending to companies that have been in operation for at least two years.

“When we say tourism, people often think of hotels. In fact, tourism covers everything from hotels to tour companies to street shops. We need to help them develop,” said U Andrew Khant.

The move represents Myanmar Tourism Bank’s first lending efforts. The bank plans to expand lending to other areas of the tourism sector including tourism services and infrastructure.

“We focus on the tourism sector for our first loans,” explained U Andrew Khant. “We made the decision at a meeting of the bank’s board of directors to provide loans to other businesses related to the tourism sector in the future. We are also planning to increase the amount of the loans.”

Using the Reducing Balance Method, the bank calculates interest payments based on the outstanding principal balance instead of charging a fixed interest rate based on the original loan amount.

It will charge an annual interest rate of 16 percent and provide loans within two weeks of application date.

“After the first loans and once we know the business nature of the borrower, we will consider providing more loans on a case-by-case basis,” said the executive.

The MSME Development Committee said at the 2nd Tourism MSME Forum 2019 that it had been in talks with Yoma Bank and Myanmar Apex Bank to provide loans to SMEs in the tourism sector.

The Myanmar Investment Bank and Myanmar Tourism Association believe that providing loans to members of a tourism association will be easier with the availability of data on borrowers.

There were 1,704 hotels and motels providing a total of 68,167 rooms in Myanmar as of December 2018, a 400 percent increase from 2016. The number of tourism licenses increased to 2,712 during the same period. Tourism-related businesses hope to have more sector-specific banks to help with their development.

Granted a license in July 2018, Myanmar Tourism Bank has opened branches in Yangon, Mandalay and Naypyidaw. With plans to open 10 more branches in areas with strong tourism businesses, it is looking to provide new services including international payment solutions, special savings interest rate and other loans.

မြန်မာပြည်ကို ဧည့်သည်လာရောက်မှှုအနေနဲ့ ဒီနှစ် ဇန်နဝါရီလကနေ စက်တင်ဘာလအထိ ဧည့်သည်လာရောက်မှှုအနေနဲ့ ၃ ဒသမ ၁ သန်းကျော် ရှိပြီး အနှစ်ကာလတူထက် ခြောက်သိန်းကျော် ပိုမိုခဲ့ပါတယ်။

အသေးစား ၊ အလတ်စားလုပ်ငန်းတွေဟာ လုပ်ငန်းစတင်ဖို့နဲ့ တိုးချဲ့ဖို့ ချေးငွေရရှိရဖို့ ကန့်သတ်ချက် အများအပြားရှိနေကြသလို ခရီးသွားလုပ်ငန်းတွေအတွက်လည်း ပုံစံတူကန့်သတ်ချက်တွေရှိနေပါတယ်။

မြန်မာ့ခရီးသွားဘဏ်က မြန်မာ့ခရီးသွားကဏ္ဍတိုးတက်စေဖို့ ခရီးသွားလုပ်ငန်းတွေကို ချေးငွေပံ့ပိုးပေးမယ့် အစီအစဉ် တစ်ရပ်ကိုတော့ နိုဝင်ဘာလထဲမှာ မိတ်ဆက်ခဲ့ပါတယ်။ ဒီလိုချေးငွေထုတ်ချေးပေးဖို့ Tourism MSME(Micro, Small & Medium Enterprise) Development ကော်မတီနှင့်ပူးပေါင်းပြီး မြန်မာနိုင်ငံခရီးသွားလုပ်ငန်းရှင်များအသင်း ခရီးသွားလုပ်ငန်းအသင်းဝင်တွေကို တစ်ဦးကို အများဆုံးကျပ်သိန်း(၂၀၀)အထိ စတင်ထုတ်ချေးမယ်လို့ သိရပါတယ်။

“အသင်းဝင်တွေအားလုံးထဲက လူဘယ်နှစ်ယောက်ရယ်လို့ သတ်မှတ်ထားတာမရှိပါဘူး။ အသင်းဝင် အားလုံးကို ဝန်ဆောင်မှုပေးဖို့ရည်ရွယ်ထားပါတယ်” မြန်မာ့ခရီးသွားဘဏ်၏ Deputy Managing Director ဦးအင်ဒရူးခန့်က ဆိုပါတယ်။

လက်ရှိမှာ မြန်မာနိုင်ငံခရီးသွားလုပ်ငန်းရှင်များအသင်း အသင်းဝင်ဦးရေ(၄၀၀)ခန့်ရှိပြီး ဒီထဲက အသင်းဝင်အားလုံးကို ချေးငွေထုတ်ချေးရန်ဖို့ မြန်မာ့ခရီးသွားဘဏ်က ကျပ်သိန်း(၇၀၀၀)ခန့် ထုတ်ချေးရန် လျာထားပါတယ်။

ချေးငွေလျှောက်ထားဖို့ ခရီးသွားကုမ္ပဏီတွေ အနေနဲ့ အပေါင်ပစ္စည်းမလိုဘဲ Credit Guarantee Insurance စနစ်အပြင် အခြားလိုအပ်သောစာရွက်စာတမ်းတွေနဲ့ လျှောက်ထားနိုင်ပါတယ်။ ချေးငွေရရှိဖို့ ခရီးသွားကုမ္ပဏီတစ်ခုအနေနဲ့ လုပ်ငန်းလည်ပတ်မှုသက်တမ်းအနည်းဆုံးသုံးနှစ်ရှိရန် လိုအပ်ပြီး အနည်းဆုံး(၂)နှစ်အထိ လည်ပတ်နေသောလုပ်ငန်းများပါ ထည့်သွင်းစဉ်းစားပေးသွားမယ်လို့ ဦးအင်ဒရူးခန့်ကဆိုပါတယ်။

“ကျွန်တော်တို့ဆီမှာ ခရီးသွားလုပ်ငန်းဆိုရင် ဟိုတယ်လို့ပဲပြေးမြင်ကြတယ်။ တကယ်တမ်းကျတော့ ဟိုတယ် လည်းပါတယ်။ ခရီးသွားလုပ်ငန်းလည်းပါတယ်။ နောက်ဆုံးအဆင့်ပြောရရင် လမ်းဘေးဈေးသည်ကအစ ပါဝင်ပါတယ်။ ဒါတွေအားလုံးကို ကဏ္ဍအလိုက်ဖွံ့ဖြိုးတိုးတက်အောင် ဆောင်ရွက်ပေးဖို့လိုပါတယ်”ဟု ၎င်းကဆိုသည်။

မြန်မာ့ခရီးသွားဘဏ်အနေနဲ့ လက်ရှိပထမဆုံးချေးငွေထုတ်ချေးခြင်းအဖြစ် ခရီးသွား လုပ်ငန်းကဏ္ဍကို ချေးငွေထုတ်ချေးခြင်းဖြစ်ပြီး ယင်းနောက်ခရီးသွားဝန်ဆောင်မှုကဏ္ဍ၊ ခရီးသွားကဏ္ဍအတွက် အခြေခံအဆောက်အဦကဏ္ဍများပါ ချေးငွေထုတ်ချေးဖို့ စီစဉ်ထားပါတယ်ဟု အဆိုပါဘဏ်က ဆိုပါတယ်။

“ ကျွန်တော်တို့အခုမှစတင်ထုတ်ချေးတာဖြစ်တဲ့အတွက် Tourism ကဏ္ဍကို အဓိကထားတာဖြစ်ပါ တယ်။ နောက်ပိုင်းTourism နဲ့ဆက်စပ်ကဏ္ဍအတွက်ပါ ချေးငွေထုတ်ချေးဖို့အတွက်လဲ ဘဏ်ရဲ့ဘုတ်အဖွဲ့နဲ့ အစည်းအဝေးထိုင်ထားပြီးသားပါ။ အခုသတ်မှတ်ထားတဲ့ ချေးငွေပမာဏအပြင် ထပ်တိုးဖို့အတွက်လဲ ပြင်ဆင်ထားပါတယ် ” လို့ ဦးအန်ဒရူးခန့်က ရှင်းပြပါတယ်။

ထုတ်ချေးမယ့် ချေးငွေအမျိုးအစားက Reducing Method ကို သုံးထားတယ်လို့ ချေးငွေမိတ်ဆက်ပွဲမှာ ရှင်းပြထားပါတယ်။ ဒီ Method ကို ကျင့်သုံးခြင်းအားဖြင့် တစ်လပြီးတစ်လ လစဉ်ပြန်ဆပ်ရင်း တကယ့်ဆပ်ရမယ့်  အတိုးအရင်းပေါင်းက နည်းသွားမှာဖြစ်ပါတယ်။

အတိုးနှုန်းအနေနဲ့ အများဆုံး(၁၆)ရာခိုင်နှုန်းအထိကျသင့်မည်ဖြစ်ပြီး ချေးငွေအတွက် စာရွက်စာတမ်း စုံလင်တာနှင့်အမျှ ငွေကြေးကို နှစ်ပတ်အတွင်းထုတ်ပေးသွားမှာဖြစ်ပါတယ်။

“တကယ်လို့ချေးငွေရပြီးနောက်ပိုင်း ကျွန်တော်တို့ဘက်က business nature ကိုနားလည်သွားတာနဲ့ နောက်ပိုင်းမှာ Case by Case စဉ်းစားပြီးတော့ လုပ်ငန်းတိုးချဲ့ခြင်းတာဖြစ်ဖြစ် ချေးငွေကို အခုထပ်တိုးပြီ ထုတ်ချေးလို့ရပါတယ်” လို့ ဦးအန်ဒရူးခန့်က ဆိုသည်။

လက်ရှိ ခရီးသွားလုပ်ငန်းဆိုင်ရာ အငယ်စား၊ အသေးစား၊ အလတ်စားလုပ်ငန်းဖွံ့ဖြိုးတိုးတက်ရေး အတွက် ပြီးခဲ့တဲ့ မေလမှာကျင်းပခဲ့တဲ့ ဒုတိယအကြိမ်မြောက် Tourism MSME Forum 2019၌  ဘဏ်များနှင့်ချိတ်ဆက်ပြီး ချေးငွေရရှိနိုင်ရန် ရိုးမဘဏ်၊ မြန်မာ့ရှေ့ဆောင် ဘဏ်တွေနဲ့  ဆွေးနွေးထားကြောင်း  MSME Development Committee ကထုတ်ပြန်ထားပါတယ်။

အသေးစား၊ အလတ်စားလုပ်ငန်းကဏ္ဍမှာ ခရီးသွားကဏ္ဍအတွက် အဖွဲ့အစည်းတစ်ခုရဲ့ အောက်မှာ အသင်းဝင်တွေကို ချေးငွေထုတ်ချေးခြင်းက တိကျသော သတင်းအချက်အလက်များပိုမိုရရှိဖို့ လွယ်ကူသလို ထုတ်ချေးလိုက်တဲ့ ချေးငွေအတွက်လဲ အကျိုးရရှိအသုံးချနိုင်မည်ဖြစ်သောကြောင့် ခရီးသွားကဏ္ဍ အထောက်အကူဖြစ်လိမ့်မယ်လို့ ဘဏ်ဘက်ကရော၊ အသင်းဘက်ကပါ ယုံကြည်ထားပါတယ်။

မြန်မာတစ်နိုင်ငံလုံးမှာ ဟိုတယ်နဲ့ တည်းခိုရိပ်သာလိုင်စင် ၁၇၀၄ လုံး (အခန်း၆၈၁၆၇ခန်း)ထိ ရှိပြီး ၂၀၁၆ ခုနှစ်ကနဲ့ယှဉ်ရင် အလုံးရေး ၄၀၀ နီးပါးတိုးလာခြင်းဖြစ်ပါတယ်။ ခရီးသွားလုပ်ငန်းလိုင်စင် ၂၇၁၂ ခု ထိရှိပါတယ်။ ခရီးသွားလုပ်ငန်းတွေကို အားပေးရာရောက်တဲ့ ခရီးသွားဘဏ်လို အခြားကဏ္ဍအလိုက် ဘဏ်တွေပိုလည်ပတ်လာနိုင်ဖို့ လုပ်ငန်းရှင်တွေက မျှော်လင့်ကြပါတယ်။

၂၀၁၈ ခုနှစ်ဇူလိုင်လအတွင်းက ဘဏ်လုပ်ငန်းလိုင်စင်ရရှိခဲ့ပြီး လက်ရှိတွင် ရန်ကုန်၊ မန္တလေး၊ နေပြည်တော်တို့တွင် ဘဏ်ခွဲတွေဖွင့်လှစ်ထားတဲ့ မြန်မာ့ခရီးသွားဘဏ်က ခေတ်မီတဲ့ နိုင်ငံတကာ payment solution ၊ ခရီးသွားကဏ္ဍဖွံ့ဖြိုး တိုးတက်စေဖို့ ချေးငွေဝန်ဆောင်မှု ၊ မြန်မာ့ခရီးသွားကဏ္ဍအတွက် အထူးငွေစုအတိုးနှုန်းများဖြင့် Customers တွေ၏ လိုအပ်ချက် များနှင့် ကိုက်ညီမှုရှိအောင် ဆောင်ရွက်သွားမယ့်လို့ ရည်မှန်းထားပါတယ်။ လာမယ့်နှစ်အတွင်းမှာလည်း ခရီးသွားလုပ်ငန်းအားကောင်းတဲ့ ဒေသ (၁၀) ခုမှာ ဘဏ်ခွဲတွေဖွင့်လှစ်သွားဖို့ရှိပါတယ်။

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Myanma tourism bank opens on may 6.

Myanma Tourism Bank opened in Yangon on May 6, sources said.

The opening ceremony was held at Novotel Hotel in Yangon on My 6 and Ohn Maung, Minister for Hotel and Tourism, Yangon Region Chief Minister Phyo Min Thein, Myanmar Tourism Bank’s Chairman Yan Win, officials from the bank, Chairman of Myanma Banks Association and officials from Travel Association attended the ceremony.

Minister for Hotel and Tourism delivered the opening speech while Yangon Region Chief Minister gave a speech to honour the ceremony.

“The main intention of the bank is to provide financial assistance for tourism industry. The bank is intended to help tourism companies, organizations and hotels. The interest rate is fixed by Central Bank of Myanmar. Five percent of the profit will be used annually for the development of the tourism industry,” said Yan Win, Chairman of the Myanma Tourism Bank.

Head office of the bank is located in Yangon while its branches will be opened in Nay Pyi Taw and Mandalay soon. It is planning to open ten branches this year, he said.

The initial investment is Ks22 billion and US$5 million will be added to the initial investment if the Central Bank of Myanmar allowed the bank to use foreign currencies, according to its chairman.

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Myanmar Tourism Bank will provide tourism association members uncollateralized SME loans beginning this month

Myanma Tourism Bank has announced that it will begin providing Union of Myanmar Travel Association members uncollateralised SMEs loans beginning this month.

MTB announced the SMEs loans for UMTA members, who are primarily travel and tour companies, at an event in a hotel in Yangon yesterday.

“We will release the loans within two week to a month if the applicants have provided the necessary documents for their application,” said MTB Deputy Managing Director Andrew Khant.

While the loans are being initially offered to UMTA members, MTB will later on open them up to other tourism-sector businesses, Khant said.

The interest rate for the uncollateralised loans is set at 13 percent a year and applicants are also required to take up credit guarantee insurance (CGI) from Myanmar Insurance.

The maximum amount for the loans is set at K20 million for applicants who show viable plan for the use of the funds.

“As a tourism-related bank, we will focus on lending to this sector. But we also plan to offer financial support to other related sectors and businesses to add further support for the tourism industry,” said MRB Chair U Yan Win.

However, some tourism-business owners say they are less than happy with the interest rate for the loans and the requirement to take up the credit guarantee insurance, which will raise the cost of the loan. 

“As a businessmen ,I think the rate for the loan is too high. But we face difficulties in getting loans with other bank so we welcome MTB’s efforts. Most small tour companies need some sort of financing,” said U Than Naing, the owner of a tourism business.

According to Ministry of Hotels and Tourism statistics, there are roughly more than 2500 travel and tour companies in the country, but the majority are categorised as small and medium-sized enterprises. Meanwhile, UMTA has around 1000 members.

MTB was one of five sector-specific banks granted a banking licence by the Central Bank of Myanmar (CBM) in 2017. It was founded by a public tourism company during U Thein Sein’s government. K2 billion was raised to start the bank so it could help boost the tourism sector.

The bank aims to offer low interest rate loans to assist the tourism sector.

At present, there are a few large hotel, and travel and tour companies in Myanmar that are able to invest large amounts to finance their businesses. The bank is located on 347 Pyay Road, Kamayut township, Yangon.

(The Myanmar Times: https://www.mmtimes.com/news/bank-provide-tourism-association-members-no-collateral-loans.html )

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Waterborne diseases are spreading in Gaza due to a lack of clean water and rising temperatures, the United Nations humanitarian coordinator in Gaza said on Friday.

Croatia’s Economy Continues to Expand but Sluggish Growth Delaying Economic Recovery in Emerging Europe and Central Asia

WASHINGTON, April 11, 2024 – Croatia’s economic activity continues to show resilience and annual GDP growth at 2.8 percent in 2023 remained well above the European Union average. This is largely due to the booming tourism sector and the strong inflow of EU funds, supportive fiscal policy, strong labor market and large inflows of workers’ remittances, which fostered robust personal consumption growth, says the World Bank’s Economic Update for the emerging market and developing economies (EMDEs) of the Europe and Central Asia region, released today.

In 2024, growth is projected to accelerate to 3.0 percent reflecting positive carry-over effects from 2023, strengthening external demand, as well as expansionary fiscal policy. In addition, a strong labor market, which is reflected in a relatively high share of companies reporting shortages of labor and a strong rise in wages, will further support increase in real incomes. Inflation is set to continue its declining trend and gradually narrow towards the ECB target of close to 2 percent by the beginning of 2025, but risks remain given upward wage pressures.

Economic activity in the emerging and developing economies of the Europe and Central Asia region is likely to slow this year as a weaker global economy, tight monetary policy, slowdown in China and lower commodity prices weigh on the region’s growth outlook, says the World Bank’s Economic Update for the region, released today.

Regional growth is likely to slow to 2.8% this year, following substantial strengthening to 3.3% in 2023 as the economies of both Russia and war-hit Ukraine returned to growth and because of a more robust recovery in Central Asia. Regional output growth is likely to remain broadly unchanged in 2025.

Headwinds to the outlook are multiple. A slower-than-expected recovery in key trading partners, especially in the euro area, restrictive monetary policies, and an exacerbation of geopolitical developments could further dampen growth across the region.

“Countries of Europe and Central Asia continue to confront multiple crises, exacerbated by a challenging global growth environment,” said Antonella Bassani, World Bank Vice President for the Europe and Central Asia region . “Reviving productivity growth by stimulating business dynamism and improving resilience against the risks from climate change can help protect the region’s people and accelerate economic growth.”

Sluggish growth will further delay the region’s recovery from recent shocks, including Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, which remains ongoing, the pandemic, and the 2022 cost-of-living crisis.

Inflation has fallen faster than expected in the emerging markets and developing economies (EMDEs) of Europe and Central Asia, largely due to steep declines in global energy and food prices. The median annual consumer price inflation in the region fell to 4.2% by February 2024 from 15% at the start of 2023. Nevertheless, the 2022 cost-of-living crisis continues to affect households despite increases in real incomes last year.

In Ukraine, the pace of recovery is projected to slow to 3.2% this year from 4.8% in 2023, reflecting a smaller harvest and persistent labor shortage. The country’s economic outlook remains conditional on donor support and the duration of Russia’s invasion. According to recent estimates by the World Bank and partner institutions, the cost of reconstruction and recovery in Ukraine has grown to $486 billion, which is more than two times the size of Ukraine’s pre-war economy in 2021.

Growth in Türkiye is also likely to weaken to 3% this year – its lowest since 2009, except for the pandemic-affected years – as macroeconomic consolidation efforts are expected to restrain domestic demand. Subdued global oil prices will dampen prospects across Central Asia, with growth slowing to 4.1% this year from an estimated 5.5% in 2023.  

The report includes a special focus chapter on unleashing the power of the private sector. It notes that economic development in the region has been a story of transition from plan to market economies, broad and deep structural reforms, and the emergence of private initiative, the main driver of growth and prosperity.

In less than three decades, 12 of the countries in the region joined the European Union (EU). The transition of these countries to EU-integrated market economies with robust institutions and production structures illustrates the success of the deep reforms of some of the countries, which have also achieved high-income status.

“The private sector in several countries in the region faces barriers, which hamper its ability to expand and innovate,” said Ivailo Izvorski, World Bank Chief Economist for Europe and Central Asia region. “Boosting business dynamism will require addressing several challenges, including upgrading the competition environment, reducing state involvement in the economy, improving the quality of education, and strengthening the availability of finance for firms.”

Efforts to foster competition and free markets should focus on reducing barriers to entry and facilitate exit for unproductive firms. The substantial presence of state-owned enterprises is also a major constraint to levelling the playing field for private enterprises.

Private firms are also faced with an inadequately educated workforce and large skills gaps, which are major constraints to growth. High emigration rates of young and skilled workers do not help in the short term. A better educated workforce is associated with higher productivity and can lead to more innovation.

Bank lending to the private sector is relatively low and has not increased in the past decade. The lending also tends to be more short-term. To improve productivity growth and innovation, firms need access to long-term finance.

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World Bank chief pushes internal reforms at spring meetings

WORLD Bank President Ajay Banga said on Friday (Apr 12) he plans to highlight a range of process improvements next week to speed up the development lender’s loan approvals, improve the accountability of its 16,000 employees and attract private capital to projects.

Banga told reporters ahead of the World Bank and International Monetary Fund spring meetings that the development lender had reduced its average 19-month project approval time by about three months and would cut it by another three months by the middle of next year.

Banga, a former MasterCard CEO who took over the helm of the World Bank last June, is guiding the lender’s expansion of its traditional development and anti-poverty mission to include fighting climate change and other global crises. This requires far greater resources and a major expansion of its lending capacity, which was US$128.3 billion in the fiscal year ended June 30, 2023.

The World Bank adjusted its loan-to-equity ratio to unlock another US$40 billion of lending capacity over 10 years, but this falls far short of the trillions of dollars needed annually to finance the global energy transition and climate mitigation.

Banga said more steps were underway, including joint work with other multilateral development banks and credit ratings agencies to unlock the use of callable capital, the emergency capital pledged by governments but not paid in.

Banga said the World Bank will launch a new enterprise-wide platform for loan and insurance guarantees that puts it on a path to more than triple its guarantee issuances to US$20 billion by 2030.

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But a major new securitisation initiative could also attract vast amounts of private capital.

“We are at the beginning of a years-long effort to build a securitisation platform for the emerging markets, making it easier for institutional investor – pension funds, insurance companies and sovereign wealth funds – to bring some portion of the US$70 trillion they manage to these developing countries.”

The World Bank also is reforming its business planning and budgeting processes to find savings to redeploy elsewhere, including US$144 million from improving productivity at its core International Bank for Reconstruction and Development and International Development Association arms, Banga said.

He added that a unified approach to real estate had saved the lender US$150 million for 2023 and 2024.

“We want to start every year looking for 5 per cent productivity savings from our expenses,” Banga said. “This is all part of the work that we are trying to do to get the plumbing of the Bank to work even better.”

In addition, the World Bank has recently launched a new “corporate scorecard” to measure its performance based on development and climate outcomes rather than dollars deployed. The new scorecard has 22 categories, down from the previous 153, Banga said. REUTERS

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