India to contribute to World Bank facility for developing nations

"I am happy to announce that India will be an active partner and will soon be making a contribution to this (South-South Experience Exchange) Facility," Finance Minister Pranab Mukherjee said at an event, Innovative Development: South-South Opportunity, last night ahead of the annual IMF-World Bank meetings in Istanbul.

Last year, the World Bank Group launched South-South Experience Exchange Facility to promote the idea that the development sucesses in one country can pull people out of poverty in another.

Mukherjee said while India's experience in social and economic programmes like NAREGA, poverty alleviation, IT and telecom sector could help other developing countries to face and overcome developmental challenges, the country itself has much to learn from the experiences of other nations as well in the areas of subsidy and environmental issues.
The Finance Minister is in the Turkish city to participate in a two-day annual IMF-World Bank meeting beginning on Tuesday.

"We have much to learn from the experiences of other countries. We would be keen to know how conditional cash transfer programmes have worked successfully to ensure targeted subsidy provision to the poor in many countries, or how some countries have masterminded environmental concerns in their national development plans," Mukherjee said.

India's experience in poverty alleviation, education, cooperatives, women's thrift and credit groups, and NREGA could provide valuable lessons to other developing countries, especially African nations, he said.

"The Indian experience in implementing economic reforms, in the development of IT sector, building of infrastructure through the PPP model, in the opening up and rapid growth of the telecom sector, setting up of centres of excellence in encouraging and management education, could help other developing countries to face and overcome similar development challenges," the Finance Minister said.

Mukherjee hoped the donor countries would continue to support the facility and the south-south development agenda. He called the South-South  Experience Exchange Facility a creative initiative and said, "I encourage our developing country partners to take advantage of this facility and learn from each other."

"Many developing countries may not have enough financial resources, but many have very rich developmental knowledge. Oftentimes, knowledge is equally, if not more important, than financial support. It is our hope that with all of us working together, we can seize the South-South opportunity to promote common development," he added.