Open Letter · Spring Meetings 2026 · Day 5 · April 18, 2026
An Open Letter to the Executive Directors of the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund
On Scale, Accountability, Cost, and the Governance Architecture That Determines Whether Any of It Changes
Dear Executive Directors,
The World Bank and the IMF are this week discussing how to deploy the next wave of financing to the world’s most vulnerable countries. The scale of the ambition is real. The World Bank has committed $119.8 billion to Sub-Saharan Africa since 2015, and $58.2 billion to evaluated projects in fragile and conflict-affected states globally. The IMF deployed approximately $170 billion in emergency financing across 88 countries during the COVID pandemic alone. These are not small numbers. They represent the largest sustained deployment of concessional and emergency development finance in the history of either institution.
The question this letter addresses is a simple one: who is accountable for the outcomes? Not individually — not which task team leader, which mission chief, which country director. Institutionally. Which body has the authority, the mandate, and the information to assess whether this money delivered what it was committed to deliver — and to require change when it did not?
The answer, on the current institutional architecture, is: no one. And you are the reason why.
Three operations in Nigeria illustrate what Board approval without Board accountability produces in practice.
You approved the Nigeria Power Sector Guarantees Project in May 2014. The Chair Summary stated explicitly that achievement of the project’s development impact required “a reduction in the high level of technical and commercial losses in the power system.” Distribution company losses were running at 35 percent at approval. They remained at 35–50 percent throughout implementation. The project closed with a sector financial deficit of approximately $1 billion. The IFC held equity in the project developer. MIGA insured the gas infrastructure. The Bank guaranteed the power purchase agreement. The Country Director was required to make monthly visits to the Finance Minister to ensure NBET’s payments were met. The rating was Moderately Satisfactory. The conditions you said were required were never met. No Board member has been asked to account for the gap.
You approved the Nigeria Saving One Million Lives Programme for Results in 2015 — $500 million, the world’s largest PforR at approval. The fiduciary assessment was approved with knowledge that procurement fraud had occurred in the implementing ministry. 83 percent of first-year disbursements sat on the balance sheet as a single unaudited line item. IEG ultimately rated the project Moderately Unsatisfactory, with efficiency rated Negligible. Nigeria will repay $387.6 million over 38 years. The Board rated it Moderately Satisfactory throughout implementation. No Board member has been asked to account for the gap.
You approved the IMF’s $3.4 billion Nigeria Rapid Financing Instrument in April 2020. The governance framework was described by the IEO as a checklist. The Accountant General of Nigeria was convicted by the Federal High Court in Abuja in 2024 for the systematic misappropriation of public funds during the period the RFI was active. The IMF’s Legal Department documented near-universal governance failures across 50 COVID recipient countries. Nigeria repaid in full. The receipts were not checked. No Board member has been asked to account for the gap.
The structural reason for this pattern is not difficult to identify. A Board that co-approves every loan cannot independently oversee it. When you vote to approve a project, you become co-author of that project. You cannot then independently scrutinise its failure without implicating your own prior endorsement. The result is a Board that is simultaneously too involved in operational decisions and too detached from strategic accountability — because the approval process has already committed it to every project in the portfolio.
The 2009 Zedillo Commission told the World Bank to move to a non-resident Board that approves policy and strategy and delegates project approval to management. The recommendation was made seventeen years ago. Every major comparable institution — the Asian Development Bank, the New Development Bank, the European Investment Bank, the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank — already operates this way. Their governance is not worse for it. It is structurally better, because the Board can scrutinise outcomes without having co-authored the inputs. The World Bank Board still approves individual loans. The IMF Board approved the Nigeria COVID RFI. Neither Board has a mechanism to hold itself accountable for the outcomes of what it approves.
There is a cost dimension to this debate that is rarely surfaced directly. The World Bank’s resident Board costs the institution an estimated $100 million per year — the salaries, offices, travel, and support infrastructure of a permanently resident body of 25 Executive Directors and their alternates and advisers. The IMF’s resident Board carries a comparable cost. The Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank, by contrast, operates with a non-resident Board at an estimated annual cost of approximately $5 million.
The AIIB is a younger and smaller institution and the comparison is not exact. But the question it raises is straightforward: is the World Bank getting $95 million per year of additional accountability value from its resident Board structure, compared with what a non-resident Board would provide? The three Nigeria cases documented above suggest the answer is no. The Board that approved the PSGP, the SOML PforR, and the COVID RFI — at a combined cost of several hundred million dollars of Board time and institutional infrastructure — produced ratings that shielded all three operations from scrutiny until after project closure. That is not value for money. It is the appearance of oversight without the substance of it.
Can the World Bank and the IMF achieve better managerial accountability — more rigorous scrutiny of outcomes, stronger consequences for institutional failure — at materially lower cost? The Zedillo Commission thought so in 2009. The delivery data since 2009 has not made that argument weaker.
This letter is addressed to you collectively because the accountability failure it documents is structural, not personal. The individuals who sit on these Boards are distinguished professionals operating within a system that does not require them to account for the gap between what they approve and what is delivered. The question is whether that system changes. The finance ministers who appointed you are in Washington this week. The populations those ministers represent are living with the consequences of operations these Boards approved and rated Satisfactory. The tools to change this are in your hands. The question is whether you will use them.
Respectfully,
Parminder Brar
Founder, mdbreform.com
Former World Bank Country Manager and Lead Governance Specialist
April 18, 2026
The Board accountability analysis: Who Is Minding the Ship?
The SOML case study: Designed to Fail
The Nigeria Power Sector case (draft, submitted for comment): How Not to Do PPPs in Africa
The seven questions for the Spring Meetings: Spring Meetings 2026 Brief
The full open letter series: Six Open Letters