The World Bank is Australia's largest development partner. A new publication, Unlocking potential, achieving results, showcases what we have achieved together in the past year to improve the lives of people in developing countries.
Australia works with the World Bank across a broad range of development initiatives both in the Asia Pacific and other regions. Collaboration has increased fivefold since 2005 to $678 million in 2011-12–an indication of our shared objectives.
In 2011, Australia and the World Bank signed the Australia-World Bank Group Partnership Agreement which provides a framework for increased cooperation to achieve development results.
Australia benefits from the World Bank Group's specialist expertise in a range of development initiatives and their geographical reach allows us to extend the impact of our aid program. Conversely, the World Bank is able to take advantage of Australian experience, including working in small and fragile states and our technical expertise in key sectors such as water, dryland farming, mining and food security.
This publication showcases the achievements of this important partnership. Some of the results reported in 2012 include:
- school enrolments in Afghanistan increased from around one million to more than eight million, including more than three million girls
- more than 20,000 vulnerable Indonesian women benefited from empowerment activities like literacy and numeracy training
- access to finance was provided to more than 500,000 people in the Pacific.
Visit our Unlocking potential page to find out more about how the World Bank and Australia are working together to help lift people out of poverty.