International Standards at the heart of development: ISO joins the World Bank in launching the World Development Report 2025

• The World Development Report 2025, launched today, marks the first time the World Bank has dedicated its flagship report to the role of International Standards in development.
• The International Organization for Standardization (ISO) welcomes the report's call to harness standards as strategic tools to drive economic growth, and to strengthen global participation and cooperation in standardization.
• The report highlights how International Standards underpin economies, shape trade, reduce risk, support innovation, and why greater global participation from all countries in developing standards is crucial.
• ISO will carry forward the momentum from the report launch with a series of activation events in January 2026, co-hosted with the World Bank.

Geneva, Switzerland, 11 December 2025 | ISO today joins the World Bank to mark the official launch of the World Development Report 2025: Standards for Development. For the first time in its 45-year history, the World Bank's flagship report is dedicated to the role of International Standards.

The report underscores that standards - often unseen and underappreciated - are in fact foundational infrastructure for economic development, trade, innovation, and sustainability.

The global appetite for standards has surged in recent years, with a growing understanding of the crucial role of standards in economic growth. To date, ISO has created a portfolio of 25,000 standards, reinforcing their importance as strategic assets providing access to global markets.

Despite the fact that there is immense opportunity for strengthening global participation and cooperation in the development of International Standards, one of the main findings of the report is that many developing countries face economic and institutional constraints that limit their ability to participate in the process.

ISO Secretary-General Sergio Mujica said the World Bank's decision to dedicate the 2025 World Development Report to standards sends a powerful signal.

"International Standards are no longer invisible infrastructure - they are critical enablers of sustainable, inclusive development," Mr Mujica said.

"Unlocking the full development potential of standards means ensuring all countries can participate in their creation and implement them. This report is a timely call to action to support broader, more strategic participation, ensuring that standards are globally relevant and reflect diverse development needs and contexts.

"ISO has a proven track record in providing capacity building support, and we call on the global community to join us to do more to support developing countries to benefit from International Standards."

Indermit Gill, Chief Economist and Senior Vice President for Development Economics at the World Bank, said, "Standards are both central and unsung today. When they're set right, they go unnoticed: the ship sails through the canal, the building withstands an earthquake, a kilogram weighs the same in Kenya as in Canada, and no one gives the gains that come a second thought.

"The standardized shipping container might well have catalyzed more trade in manufactured goods than all the trade deals put together. Digital standards could do the same for the services trade.

"When countries are active in adapting, aligning, and authoring standards, they are a powerful tool for growth and poverty reduction. This report is the first assessment of the role of standards in economic development-and a call to developing nations to make them a core component of their development strategies."

The World Development Report 2025 provides the first comprehensive analysis of the global landscape of standards today. It outlines how countries can use them to accelerate economic development, providing a practical policy framework for countries at all stages of development.

The report proposes a progressive framework: adapt-align-author. For countries at an early stage of development, the smartest course is to adapt International Standards to suit domestic conditions as needed. At more advanced stages, they should aim to align domestic markets with International Standards. At all stages, countries should author International Standards in priority areas in which they have developed the requisite expertise.

ISO emphasizes that any country has full and equal opportunity to engage in the development of international standards through its national standards body. By increasing participation and strengthening national capacity to adopt and implement standards, countries can unlock new avenues for innovation, investment, and sustainable growth.

The report's recommendations around support for capacity building and participation mirror long-standing priorities in ISO's global strategy.

The launch of the report marks the beginning of a broader conversation on how to maximize the power of standards in achieving development goals. ISO will carry forward the momentum in January 2026 through activation events co-hosted with the World Bank.