Is the World Bank’s COVID-19 Crisis Lending Big Enough, Fast Enough? New Evidence on Loan Disbursements

“The pace of World Bank lending appears incommensurate to the scale of the crisis: while the Bank forecasts a 4.1 percent decline in GDP growth between 2019 and 2020 in the median low- income country, World Bank disbursements in 2020 have risen by just 0.3% of GDP by comparison.”