The management of the World Bank tended last year to inflate the reported success of its lending to the poorest countries while the organisation was consumed by wrangles over the leadership of Paul Wolfowitz, its president until June 2007.
The Bank also struggles to address the big global issues of climate change and communicable diseases when these conflict with the interests of individual poor countries, according to the annual assessment by the Bank's watchdog.
In its annual review of development effectiveness, the Independent Evaluation Group of the World Bank said yesterday that the medium-term outcomes from Bank lending had improved, but there had also been a dip in performance in 2007.