Video chat with David Dollar (9)
Updated: 2008-02-25 10:08
CD: What is the most important service that the World Bank can provide to the cities?
DD: If you really want a serious answer the most important thing is to be a sounding board. We have cities that I would say come to us with problems, and oftentimes they come with an initial thought about the solution. Sometimes there's a real problem with their initial thought about the solution, and so we can be a useful sounding board and say, well, we did some analysis and this is really not very economic. I'll give you one example, I won't mention the city, but we were working with one city on their water supply. I think the city had like 17 districts, so the initial plan - you can guess the initial plan - was 17 small water treatment plants. It would have involved moving huge numbers of people, because in some parts of the city you don't want to put a water treatment plant; you'd have to move a lot of people out of valuable property. So we ended up designing the first ring water main in China, where there's one ring - like a ring road but it's a water main. It goes all around the city. It's got one plant at the north and one plant at the south, located outside of the city center, which is always cheaper to do so you don't have to displace a lot of people from valuable property, and everybody gets served. I think the original plan was going to cost $700 million and the final plan cost $300 million. So this is a good example of what the World Bank can do. What we lent was relatively minor, but the city saved hundreds of millions of dollars and a lot of aggravation.
CD: I think it's quite valuable help and it seems that you guys are playing a unique role as a development consulting service to Chinese cities that don't usually get it anywhere else.
DD: There are other smart people who can advise you. But I think what we bring that I think is unique is this package of advice plus we invest in the project. So, in the project that I just mentioned, we did lend 50 or 60 million dollars, a minority part of the project but we're investing in making this thing work And that's a little bit different from just coming in and advising and saying, well, here's a good idea, why don't you do this. But then we have to stay there throughout the implementation and make sure this really works.
CD: You do this sort of projects in India, too, and in other developing countries?
DD: We do these projects all over the world, but I have to say China is our most successful partnership. We have an independent group that evaluates our projects, that's quite tough. They don't report to the management of the World Bank, they report directly to the shareholders, which are countries. And they evaluate more than 90 percent of our China projects are successful, and there's no other big program even close to that in terms of success rate. But I would give most of the credit to China; I would say China does a very good job of taking this potential resource and putting it to good use. So I would urge other countries, look at what China is doing with the World Bank. I think China is getting a lot of value out of the World Bank.
CD: Yes, China is getting a lot of value, and some of the projects can also generate experience and lessons for other countries and also for other Chinese cities and Chinese people who are not directly involved in those projects. I think that is an educational tool.
DD: If I were going to criticize, if I were going to do some self criticism, I would say that we could do more of what you just pointed out. Like I gave you that nice example of when we financed the ring water main. We've done a little bit of publicity about that, but we haven't made a big effort to disseminate that to all the cities in China who could learn from that and then do the same thing without the World Bank being involved.