The World Bank announced that "11 countries have committed to contributing over $11 billion towards innovative financial instruments, including an investment guarantee platform and a mixed capital mechanism designed to enhance the bank's financing capacity by $70 billion over ten years to address climate change, pandemics, and other global challenges." The voluntary contributions announced during the World Bank and International Monetary Fund spring meetings in Washington represent the largest individual contributions to bolster the bank's balance sheet since 2022, when the United States and other contributors expanded the mission beyond poverty alleviation.
In April 2023, World Bank contributors supported increasing the bank's leverage level to enhance lending capacity by about $40 billion over a decade. The bank also implemented an increase in the ceiling for bilateral guarantees, paving the way for an additional $10 billion in financing over ten years. The World Bank noted that "Belgium, France, Japan, and the United States have committed to funding the investment guarantee platform, while Britain, Denmark, Germany, Italy, Latvia, the Netherlands, and Norway will contribute to mixed capital instruments, which are debt-like tools used to support lending capacity."
Japan has committed to providing the first contribution to the new "Good Living Planet Fund," designed to garner contributions from governments, charities, and the private sector to help finance projects including energy transition investments and healthcare provisions. The naming of the new fund is in light of the bank's newly expanded mission "to create a world free of poverty on a planet that is fit to live," which was approved last year to reflect its role in financing directed toward climate issues. German Minister for Economic Cooperation and Development Svenja Schulze, who was the first to announce the new commitments, stated, "There is a need for further expansion of the bank's lending capacity as the needs of poor countries will continue to grow."
