Operational procurement is a crucial part of the World Bank’s efforts to become a Better Bank and fulfill our mission. Effective procurement enables our clients to achieve value for money, transparency, efficiency, and fairness in Bank-financed operations. By setting quality standards in international procurement, we respond to our clients’ needs by driving market innovation, attracting top suppliers, expanding options, and fostering global competition to deliver development outcomes with speed.
Starting March 1, 2025, the World Bank will introduce a range of measures aimed at delivering better outcomes in procurement under Investment Project Financing. These new requirements reflect extensive feedback from our clients and the business community and demonstrate our commitment to modern procurement practices. First, we will require a 50 percent minimum quality weighting for most internationally competitive procurement. Second, for contracts with an estimated value over $10 million, early market engagement will be an integrated part of our processes to attract high-caliber bidders and optimize procurement strategies. Third, we will collaborate with clients to aggregate smaller contracts into larger packages and offer direct payment options to reduce supplier payment risks.
Training programs on these new approaches will be provided to clients and World Bank staff. We will also increase our support, oversight, and scrutiny of project procurement strategies, market engagement approaches, rated criteria, quality weightings, and related procurement actions.
To align with this new mandate and to support implementation, we have published:
- Updated Procurement Regulations for Investment Project Financing, effective from March 1, 2025
- Guidance on Evaluating Bids and Proposals using Rated Criteria
- Early Market Engagement Fact Sheet
We look forward to working together and remain committed to modern, fair, and transparent procurement processes that lead to better development outcomes for people in our client countries.
