Rally round most vulnerable nations
Support for countries most vulnerable to the global economic crisis must be increased and protection for them should be made a permanent part of the world's financial architecture, said World Bank President Robert Zoellick.
"The developing countries are still suffering from the global economic crisis and it is important for the G20 to scale up support," he told journalists yesterday at a news conference in Istanbul, Turkey, ahead of the annual meetings of the World Bank Group and International Monetary Fund next week.
"The G20 summit last week provided clear markers for the work of the World Bank. But more than 160 countries were not at the G20 table…These meetings can therefore ensure that the voices of the poorest are heard and recognised. This is the G186," Zoellick told an overflowing room of journalists.
Zoellick began his remarks by expressing his sympathy for the people of Indonesia, the Philippines, Samoa and Tonga and others in the region, who have been battered by a series of natural disasters.
The president told reporters that World Bank is following up with UN agencies and other partners on the G20 request to put into operation the food security initiative launched at the G8 meetings in L'Aquila, Italy earlier this year.
That initiative calls for the injection of an additional $20 billion in agricultural development.
Responding to a question, the World Bank president said the bank would increase support for developing countries including Bangladesh in energy sector, infrastructure development and dealing with climate change issues.
"We need to move beyond words on paper and start putting seeds in the ground," the WB chief said.
Zoellick said one of the legacies of the crisis might be a change in global power relations and the latest forecasts show China and India are helping to pull the global economy out of recession.
He noted that other developing countries are also drivers of growth and a multi-polar economy less reliant on US consumer demand will be more stable.
"I have called for increasing the developing countries' share in the World Bank over time to 50 percent."
The bank responded to the requests made by countries last spring to scale up its support to $100 billion over a three-year period. "The demand [for financial support] is already moving beyond this," he said, adding, "And by the middle of next year we will start to face serious constraints."
"The danger today is no longer of a collapsing world economy. The danger today is one of complacency."
The International Monetary Fund, meanwhile, called on countries to rely on the IMF's reserves in troubled times to avoid the build-up of big national reserves that spawn damaging global imbalances, reports AFP.
IMF chief Dominique Strauss-Kahn at a separate press conference in Istanbul said, "Imbalances from the link of big reserves and building big reserves come from the fact that you might be afraid of being alone in facing speculation on your currencies."
He said some countries had built up big reserves after previous crises, including those in Asia, which contributed to the worst global financial crisis since the Great Depression.
The 186-nation IMF announced in September it had received the $500 billion in additional financing pledged by the Group of 20 largest economies at a London summit in April.
The 186-nation institution had lent four times as much in 2009 as it did in 2008 amid severe financial and economic crisis, he noted.
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