Sensible first steps

Sensible first steps
Published: Financial Times October 11 2007 21:58 | Last updated: October 11 2007 21:58

One hundred days is far too short a time for transforming the world. But it is long enough for a new leader to decide where to take the World Bank. Judged by the speech delivered earlier this week, Robert Zoellick has achieved that task.

In the speech, the new president defined the bank’s strategic objective as “inclusive and sustainable globalisation”. He stressed the continued relevance of the great global institutions today’s world has inherited. Not least, he set out relevant strategic themes. It was an encouraging start.

Mr Zoellick’s six themes are: the elimination of poverty and promotion of sustainable growth in Africa; addressing the problems of countries emerging from conflict or threatened by collapse of the state; development of a business model that make the bank relevant once more to middle-income borrowers; fostering regional and global public goods, including countering communicable diseases and tackling climate change; advancing development in the Arab world; and, finally, developing the bank‘s unique role as an “institution of knowledge and learning”.

Mr Zoellick is right to focus on making globalisation work for the poor and right, too, to wish to make the institution relevant to a broader set of stakeholders. His themes are also sensible. Perhaps most significant of all, given the attitudes of many in the administration that appointed him, is his emphasis on multilateralism. “There is,” he insists, “no successful recourse to isolation.” Thus, “together we must show that multilateralism can work much more effectively – not just in conference halls and communiqués – but in villages and teeming cities, for those most in need.”

While Mr Zoellick quite properly emphasises the importance of good governance inside both the bank and developing countries, he does so without suggesting that this is the overriding objective. Yes, he implies, corruption matters. But it is not the only thing that matters.

By demonstrating an astute blend of pragmatism and idealism, the bank’s new president has made an excellent beginning. Now comes the hard part: implementation.

Yet, on the basis of what he has laid out, Mr Zoellick deserves the full support of shareholders at the annual meetings in Washing- ton next week. Ideally, he should be the last of the presidents chosen by the American president. But this time the US has chosen someone who is enthusiastically directing the bank at the complex challenges of development.

This may only be a start. But it is at least a good one.

The Financial Times Limited 2007