New safeguard and disclosure policies at MIGA surpass IFC on development impact reporting
14 September 2007
On August 28, the Board of the World Bank Group’s political risk insurance arm approved new social, environmental and disclosure policies, and committed to report on the development impacts of its most ‘sensitive’ projects.
The Multilateral Investment Guarantee Agency (MIGA) last month adopted new disclosure, social and environmental policies. The new policies, anticipated for the past several years, are closely modeled after the International Finance Corporation's (IFC's) "performance standards", which went into effect in April 2006. Minor adjustments were made to the performance standards used by IFC in order to tailor them to the type of financial services that MIGA provides to its clients.
One notable difference is that the new policies commit MIGA to reporting on the development impacts of “sensitive” projects, whereas IFC still refuses to report publicly on the impacts of its individual projects. IFC provides only aggregate reporting on the development results of its overall portfolio.
MIGA’s new disclosure policy states: "In addition to its financial reporting, MIGA will make available reports on the development impact on the local community of sensitive projects for which it is providing guarantee support. This information will be made publicly available on MIGA’s Web site for the individual projects."