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Step up aid to countries like India, WB urges the First World

The World Bank has urged rich industrial nations to step up their foreign aid contributions to poor countries, among which India figures, and adopt sound economic policies and institutions.

''The number of countries that meet the criteria for using aid well has increased dramatically in the 1990s as a result of the adoption of free market policies,'' said the World Bank's chief economist Joseph Stiglitz in New Delhi on Tuesday.

In 1996, as many as 32 countries with poverty rates above 50 per cent had policies and institutions that were better than average for all developing countries. Those countries include India, Bolivia, China, Ethiopia, Honduras, Kyrgyz Republic and Uganda.

Stiglitz said aid contributions have fallen from $ 69 billion in 1991 to $ 48 billion in 1997. The 1997 figure accounts for 0.22 per cent of donor countries' gross domestic product. ''The smallest volume since aid was institutionalised in 1947 in the Marshall plan,'' he added.

''It is tragic and ironic that the volume of aid is declining just as the environment for effective aid is improving,'' said the author of the World Bank Report, David Dollar.

UNI

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