Despite their broadly successful track record of channeling finance to developing countries at attractive financial terms and accompanied by developmental knowledge and technical assistance, many existing MDBs face operational limitations that prevent them from maximizing the potential of their unique organizational model. Underlying many of these limitations is the key issue of governance: MDBs are often battlegrounds between different groups of shareholding countries frequently (though not always) split between borrower countries on the one side and non-borrowers on the other. This paper highlights some of the critical operational, financial, and governance obstacles facing MDBs to provoke new thinking on ways to maximize the potential of the MDB model for development in general and infrastructure in particular.
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