World Bank Not Shutting Down Yet, Publishes Another Sloppy Report Instead

The Country Economic Memorandum (CEM) for Mauritius that came out recently is typical of the dumb reports that the World Bank (WB) dishes out non-stop. Skimming through it immediately brings back to mind Lee Kuan Yew’s famous observation:

What Harry Said 

About the WB

“The World Bank report’s conclusion are part of the culture of America and, by extension, of international institutions. It had to present its findings in a bland and universalizable way, which I find unsatisfying because it doesn’t grapple with the real problems. It makes the hopeful assumption that all men are equal, that people all over the world are the same. They are not.”

32% of World Bank Policy Reports Never Downloaded

"... I am not an engineer, I am not a technician and everything that I have done in my life is only law. So, I need expert advice and I am going to put experts and not politicians at the Head of the CEB and the CWA. I am not going to do appel international and all that."

Ivan Collendavelloo, in Parliament, March 2015

"... Nun fini konpran ki nu bizin lasistans de la bank mondyal pu ki nu kapav fer bann bon developman dan sekter delo."

Ivan Collendavelloo, Feb 2016

The World Has No Time
For This Kind Of Nonsense

So reported The Economist at the end of last May. It referred to a study by the World Bank on the popularity of its policy reports. As almost half of them are supposed to at least improve public debate the two authors of the report – Doerte Doemeland and James Trevino – looked at how many times 1,611 of these policy documents were downloaded. Turns out that almost a third was never downloaded. I am not surprised. I got to read a few them over the years and I must say there's a lot of rubbish in there. So I perfectly understand that no one is bothering about so many of these reports. Who has time for crap in this fast-moving, intelligent and hyper-connected world?