The decade of the 1990s witnessed that the development cooperation had to take more complex aspects of development into consideration. In order to cope with them, the president of the World Bank, Mr. James Wolfensohn, launched the Comprehensive Development Framework (CDF) in 1999, focusing on the interdependence of four key development principles: a long-term holistic vision of development, country ownership of the development strategy, ensuring that development assistance is a country-led partnership, and a focus on results. The World Bank (together with the IMF) then translated the CDF concept into the Poverty Reduction Strategy Paper (PRSP) which could be regarded as a kind of medium-term development plan whose paramount objective is “Poverty Reduction”. The PRSP quickly became a conditionality of world bank loans for the poor developing countries (the Low-Income Countries: LICs by World Bank’s Classification).

In 2000, the UN adopted a resolution on the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) as guiding posts of development of LDCs and development cooperation by donors. The MDGs consist of 8 Goals, 21 targets and 60 indicators for measuring progress between 1990 and 2015. The progress of the MDGs had been reviewed annually by the UNDP until 2015 in 1997

On the part of the LDCs, the Thai Currency/Financial/Economic Crisis arose , which spread to other Asian countries: Indonesia, Malaysia, The Philippines, Korea, China, Hong Kong, Singapore and Taiwan. The IMF and the World Bank together with ADB and Japan tried to rescue those countries technically and financially. In coping with this crisis, the IMF was criticized rather severely because it aggravated the crisis without providing appropriate solution menu. As a matter of fact, its prescription was the same as the case of the Latin American countries, in spite of the fact that the Asian crisis is due to the short-term capital problem (the capital account of the Balance of Payments) while the Latin American crises are due to the trade balance problem (the current account of the Balance of Payments). It took several years to stabilize the Asian economies.

➛B/P consists of “Trade Account (Case of Latin America)” and “Capital Account (Case of Asia)”.

The decade of the 2000s (the first 10 years of the 21st Century) started with the World Bank’s Poverty Reduction Approach, the UN’s MDGs (which lasted until 2015), the Asian Currency/Financial/Economic crisis which aggravated the poverty of the poor (particularly people living in “absolute poverty”: The World Bank Definition is $1.9 per day) in the region. After the Asian crisis was stabilized around the year 2000, the world donor community together with the LDCs pursued its developing cooperation in line with the Poverty Reduction Approach. At the same time, a more comprehensive economic and social development of the LDCs was pursued with the specific MDGs to create a “good global society”. Incidentally, the very concept of the MDGs were succeeded to the Sustainable Development Goals (17 Goals, 169 Targets and 232 indicators) adopted in the UN in 2015, which were intended to achieve by 2030. In the case of the SDGs, they intend to apply not only to the LDCs but also the developed countries alike.

Questions: Answer the following questions

(1) Explain briefly the MDGs and the SDGs. (What are the performances of the MDGs at the end of 2015 and the present performances of the SDGs? Go to the home page of UNDP!

(2) Briefly explain what the PRSP is. Go to the World Bank home page.