Countries like India and China would have to be engaged if the World Bank has to successfully address the issue of poverty, president of the Bank Robert Zoellick has said, brushing aside arguments that the portfolios of these countries needs to be reduced due to their strong foreign exchange reserves.
"If you look at where the poor are in the world, China, India and the so-called middle-income countries that they refer to are still home to 70 percent of the poor. So if we're going to be an institution that addresses poverty, we need to deal with those countries," Zoellick said.
Brushing aside arguments that the portfolios of countries like India and China needs to be reduced at the Bank in view of their strong foreign exchange reserves, Zoellick said that if the Brazils, the Indias and the Chinas are left behind
there will not be a real multilateral system.
"Look, we now live in a world where, if we ignore the Brazils, the Indias, the Chinas, what I've seen in the world of diplomacy and political security affairs is that we are not going to have a very effective multilateral system," Zoellick
said.
"The loans that we give them are rather modest. What they're primarily getting is the knowledge services that are packaged with the loans. So about 70 percent of our projects in China now deal with the environment. They borrow from us partly as a way to compensate us for dealing with the different projects we have," he said on CNN's 'Late Edition' on Sunday.
Stressing that the Bank and its associate agencies were well capitalised, he said, "We have room to grow to help China and India as well as Africa."
© 2025