'п as ington, D.C. They hire a president, who, in turn, hires a staff. By m

tradition, rather than law, the president of the Bank is an American, usually 
a banker, proposed by the President of the United States.
Because of the size of their subscriptions, five nations— the United 
States, Japan, Germany, the United Kingdom, and France—are entitled to 
appoint executive directors; the remaining seventeen directors are elected 
by some combination of the votes of the other nations. There are 156 
member nations, but, with the independence of the Baltic states and the 
devolution of the Soviet Union into separate republics, the membership 
could increase to over 170, thereby including all the independent nations in 
the world.
The Soviet Union was one of the forty-four governments whose 
representatives signed the original Bretton Woods agreements, but along 
with the other members of the Warsaw Pact, it chose not to join the Bank 
or the Fund when these organizations were formally incorporated in 1946. 
(Poland and Czechoslovakia joined the Bank and the Fund initially but 
withdrew when the cold war began in earnest and a loan to Poland was 
blocked by the United States.
World Bank Group
In 1954, an International Finance Corporation was 
.tablished to supplement the World Bank by participating in 
juity financing in member countries, and in 1960, a third rganization, the 
International Development Association DA), was created. These three 
organizations constitute the /orld Bank Group. The IDA has the same 
officers and staff s the World Bank, but its separate charter enables it to 
offer Dans to low-income member countries repayable at 0.75 tercent 
interest over 50 years (including 10 years' grace).
Soft or concessionary assistance is made possible by ;ontributions to 
(replenishments of) the IDA by the governments of high-income 
(industrial) countries. The management of the World Bank Group is thus 
enabled to offer rates of interest and loan maturities which take into 
account the nature of the projects financed and the presumed ability of 
borrowing governments to service their debt. The initial capitalization of 
IDA for the 5 years 1960 to 1964 was less than $1 billion in hard 
currencies. By 1992, the ninth replenishment for 3 years will be over $11 
billion. Today, the World Bank Group is a far cry from what it was when 
the World Bank began in 46 under President Eugene Meyer—with three 
floors of rented office space at 1818 H Street NW and a few dozen 
employees. Even in the final days of the presidency of George Woods, in 
1968, the group had fewer than 1500 employees and four buildings. As of
119

August 31,1991, however, on the eve of the accession to the presidency of 
Lewis Preston, former chairman of the board of 
J- 
P. Morgan & Co., the
Worid Bank Group had 3 senior vice presidents, 14 vice presidents, and 
6500 employees scattered
through 18 separate buildings in" Washington, D.C.; 2 large offices in 
Paris and Tokyo; and 50 regional offices. The World Bank Group has had 
a significant positive effect on the flow of capital to the poorer countries of 
the world, both directly and indirectly, and knowledge o f Third World 
problems has increased enormously. Still, the record o f growth is spotty. In 
much of East Asia, per capita income is rising rapidly, but in Africa south 
of the Sahara, in South Asia, and in much of Latin America, the growth of 
per capita income has been discouragingly slow.

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