The world was closely watching the new government in India and needed India to succeed in order to end extreme poverty by 2020, Jim Yong Kim, president of the World Bank Group, said here on Wednesday.
On his second visit to India after assuming presidency of the World Bank Group, Dr. Jim pledged the group’s full support to Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s ambitious agenda.
If the Gujarat model of business was “scaled to all of India,” the country would rise quickly in the Doing Business Report (DBR) rankings, Dr. Jim said.
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“If the ranking of India in DBR was based just on Gujarat, [the country] would improve 50 places. So our hope is that what Mr. Modi did in Gujarat in improving the business environment is scaled to all of India, if that does happen, India will rise very quickly in the DBR rankings,” he said.
About India’s concerns over the indicators used in the DBR, Dr. Jim admitted there were a “lot of very legitimate critiques of the report”.
“Over the last 10 yrs, the DBR has continuously improved based on critiques from member counties. So, for example, instead of doing just one city from India we will be doing two. We’d do more if we had the resources,” he said.
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“The new government would like India to return to growth rates of 9 per cent a year. The World Bank fully supports this goal.” He said the World Bank “will be ready to provide financial support to India worth $15-18 billion over the next three years.”
He added, “The world needs India to succeed. If India reaches its economic goals, several million people will be lifted out of poverty in a generation’s time…This represents an historic opportunity [which is] critical not only for India but for the world if we are to end extreme poverty by 2020.”
Dr. Jim said the meeting with Mr. Modi was one of the “most inspiring I have had in my two years in this job”. The two discussed prospects of generation of more jobs, clean liveable cities, education and cleaning of the Ganga.
“An average of eight million people enters the labour force annually. It will be critical for India to build infrastructure, expand financial access, improve the investment climate, invest in its people and ensure economic sustainability in the long term. Implementing this vision will be a great challenge but I am confident that India will seize the opportunity,” he said.
Dr. Jim was accompanied by Serge Devieux, regional director of the International Finance Corporation for South Asia and Onno Ruhl, the World Bank’s country director in India.