An Evaluation of the World Bank's Trust Fund Portfolio

5.30 Consistent with the thrust of this report, more transparency onFIFs and IBRD/IDA trust funds and more integration of trust fundsinto the standard operating and reporting systems of the Bank isessential for the Board’s oversight of this growing part of the Bank’sbusiness.CHAPTER 5THE IMPACT OF TRUST FUNDS ON THE BANKSummary5.31 Along with adding resources to Bank country operations, trustfunds have expanded the Bank’s role in specific countrycircumstances (where lending is not feasible) and in the provision ofpublic goods to an extent that could not otherwise have occurred withthe Bank’s own resources. FIFs, alone, have come to constitute asizable new business line, and going forward it would be advisablefor the Bank to review FIF experience to-date to determine whetherthe legal limitations on the Bank’s responsibility for FIF-fundedactivities remains consistent with its overall trust fund policy of onlyaccepting trust funds that promote development and aideffectiveness. Trust funds have also supplemented the Bank’s budgetin support of country operations and global knowledge work beyondwhat would otherwise have been possible—sometimes nudging Bankoperations to pilot innovations. Thus trust funds amount to a de factoincrease in the Bank budget, but not one made in the most strategic orefficient way. The Board has previously been poorly informed aboutthe Bank’s administration of trust funds and their implications for theBank’s overall business, though this has begun to change asevidenced by the greater attention to trust funds in the 2011 budgetdocument.77