Enlarge role for the poor: India

India on Monday cautioned the World Bank Development Committee against taking a casual approach to the issue of enhancing the voice and participation of developing countries in the global economic arena.

In his opening statement at the WBDC meeting, finance secretary DC Gupta said, "We need to guard against the temptation to side-step substantive issues of voice, by focusing on narrow, peripheral issues." There was clearly more work needed to address the substantive issues, he added.

India also expressed concern over the evolution of the International Development Assistance. The country's IDA allocation is capped at $850 million a year.

"IDA deputies have moved from determining not only the generalities of IDA policies, but also the specifics, including policy conditionalities. But these actions have shut out the voice of its poorer members, which would have been expressed through the IDA board," Gupta told the committee.

The WBDC, however, noted that there were complexities involved in changing the voting structure.

Further, enhancing the voice and effective participation of developing and transition countries in the work and decision making of the Bank and International Monetary Fund would require action over a period of time.

At a press conference, Trevor Manuel, South African finance minister and chairman of the WBDC, said there was an urgent need to scale up efforts if the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) were to be met.

India's assessment was that an annual commitment of about $100 billion was required to meet the MDG goals.

At present, about $16 billion is allocated annually towards meeting the MDGs. However, the World Bank reckons this has to be stepped up significantly.

The WBDC said developing countries would have to sustain their efforts to strengthen policies and governance to ensure that domestic resources, private inflows and aid could be used effectively to spur growth and reduce poverty.

It also stressed that such countries should be consulted closely in scaling up progress towards meeting the MDGs.

The IDA-13 mid-term review and IDA-14 negotiations provided a timely opportunity to enhance borrower participation in the IDA replenishment process and its board's decision making, the committee said.

Developing countries could significantly increase their aggregate voting share, it added.