8228
Addres
to the FILE COPY
Board of Governors
by Barber B. Conable
President
The World Bank G
Washington, D.C
September 26, 198



Address
to the
Board of Governors
by
Barber B. Conable
President
The World Bank Group
The World Bank
Washington, D.C.



I would like to welcome you all to these Annual Meetings. I
particularly want to welcome the delegation of Angola, the newest
and 152nd member of the World Bank Group.
Before proceeding with my remarks, I want to say how sad we all
are about the tragic loss last week of the Bank Governor for Chad,
Soumaila Mahamat, and Ali Abakar, a member of the Chadian
delegation. Our sincerest sympathy to their families, friends, and
colleagues.
We have been hard at work over the weekend, and during the next
few days I look forward to continuing our friendly and productive
discussions of the important business at hand.
Our business-working for the future welfare of all people-could
hardly be more pressing. As we enter a new decade, the World
Bank-your World Bank-wants to make that future brighter,
more productive, and more fulfilling for the people of the devel-
oping countries. Of course, the first task must always be to deal
practically and efficiently with the problems of today. But we must
never lose sight of that great vision.
As we enter the 1990s, we must take a hard look at the development
priorities for the decade ahead-priorities both for developing
countries and for the international community as a whole.
The Outlook for Development
The development record of the 1980s has been mixed. Some
developing countries have made extraordinary strides in the past
ten years. Their rapid growth and new presence in world markets
are an inspiring example. The outlook for their peoples, from Korea
to Indonesia, from Thailand to Mauritius, is one of hope and new
achievements.
But the 1980s have also been a painful decade. We have learned a
bitter lesson: development can be reversible. More developing
countries have suffered reverses in the past decade than have
experienced success. The consequences of decline will be felt well
3


into the 1990s-in Sub-Saharan Africa, in the debtor countries of
Latin America, and in Central Europe.
Yet, as we begin the new decade, the potential for progress is great.
The political and ideological forces that have polarized the world
for half a century are diminishing. Political and economic power
is becoming less concentrated. There is a new recognition of the
pressures that bind countries together: the need for peace and
mutually assured security, the rapid emergence of a truly global
economy, and the imperative of managing the world's resources in
the interests of people everywhere.
This new reality should lead more countries to seek solutions
through cooperation, despite the differences that remain. The result
should be more plural economic and political institutions and
expanded opportunities for individuals and communities. The
possibilities of building a peaceful, prosperous, and sustainable
world economy in the 1990s increase as these forces take hold.
In short, to quote the social philosopher John Gardner, "The
prospects never looked brighter, and the problems never looked
tougher. Anyone who isn't stirred by both of those statements is
too tired to be of much use in the days ahead." A vigorous World
Bank is planning to be of use in ways I shall describe.
The State of the Bank
With your support, the World Bank Group has had a strong and
active year since we last met. We committed a record $21 billion
in Bank resources and mobilized an additional $9.3 billion in
cofinancing. Commitments of the International Finance Corpora-
tion (IFC) rose by one-third to $1.3 billion, and its net income
virtually doubled-as it has in each of the past three years-to
almost $200 million. The Bank Group's newest member, the
Multilateral Investment Guarantee Agency, has put in place oper-
ating procedures and has begun giving policy advice and guarantees
for private investment.
4


We at the World Bank are keenly aware of the scale of the problems
that face our members. The Bank's development work has contin-
uously evolved to meet the changing needs of its borrowers.
Adjustment lending has come into its own. The breadth, depth,
and intensity of the Bank's policy dialogue with its borrowers has
increased, and Bank efforts in resource mobilization and aid
coordination have grown. Our operational collaboration with
nongovernmental organizations has increased sharply. So, too, has
our commitment to environmentally sound development. And most
recently-following announcement of the Brady initiative-the
Bank approved its first loans with set-asides to facilitate debt
reduction in Mexico and Venezuela. The Bank is also working on
debt reduction initiatives in other countries, such as Chile, Costa
Rica, and the Philippines.
Change is the only constant in human endeavor, and the Bank, as
a human institution, is no exception. But one thing that has not
changed over the Bank's forty-three-year history is its basic
mission-to reduce poverty and accelerate growth.
The Bank spends a great deal of time analyzing economic statistics
and worrying about macroeconomic performance. But, in the end,
we know that what we are dealing with is people, not statistics.
Unless the quality of life of individual poor people is improved by
what we do, no amount of statistical analysis or macroeconomic
planning will justify our work.
As we gather on the threshold of a new decade-the one in which
the Bank will celebrate its fiftieth anniversary-I am pleased to
report to you that the state of the Bank is good. This unique
institution has continually demonstrated its resiliency and adapt-
ability in responding to our borrowers' needs. The Bank's main
asset, of course, is its corps of extraordinarily skilled and committed
staff. Their capacity for change, their ability to build and apply
the Bank's knowledge, experience, and financial creativity have
been, and will continue to be, central to the success of our efforts
to improve the lives of the world's poor.
5


To continue our fight against poverty in the poorest countries of
Sub-Saharan Africa and Asia, a ninth replenishment of the Interna-
tional Development Association (IDA) is vitally needed, since full
commitment of IDA8 funds is rapidly nearing completion. Nego-
tiations for IDA9 are under way. It is my hope that they will be
brought to a successful conclusion in the near future and that the
ninth replenishment will be at least as large, in real terms, as was
IDA8. Anything less would let down hundreds of millions of people
living in squalor. Anything less would be a grave disappointment.
The International Monetary Fund, our sister institution, is also
seeking a quota increase. I urge our member governments to give
quick and favorable consideration to this increase, too, so that the
Fund can sustain and expand its own very important work.
The task ahead is clear. The development agenda for the 1990s
must be to harness growth and use resources creatively, so as to
improve the quality of life for poor people everywhere. This is the
real challenge of development and the central task of the World
Bank and its partners, particularly the governments of developing
nations.
Priorities for the Next Decade: Using National and International
Resources More Efficiently
The development needs of the 1990s will be enormous: to overcome
stagnation in Africa, to move beyond debt paralysis in Latin
America and elsewhere, to offer growth and hope to Asia's
hundreds of millions of poor people, to assist reform and renewal
in countries moving away from centrally planned economies, and
to reverse the degradation of developing countries' natural re-
sources. In all of this the developing countries carry the main
burden of responsibility for their own future. But the industrial
world also has a vital part to play-not just in providing external
resources, but also in ensuring the developing countries' access to
their markets and in conducting their own economic policies so as
to create a global "enabling environment" for growth.
6


External Resources and Country Performance
External finance will be crucial, not only in monetary terms, but
also because with it comes new technology, knowledge, and access
to markets. Financial flows will depend on many factors, including
economic growth in the industrial countries. Any observer of the
development scene knows that the prospects for public and private
resource flows for the 1990s have changed. But development during
the coming decade cannot, and must not, be held hostage to
external finance. Governments and the donor community must
focus on the creative mobilization and use of both domestic and
international resources. This is a fundamental requirement for
healthy economic growth. It is also the best way to lay the basis
for more sustainable, high-quality flows of long-term external
finance.
There is no substitute for good macroeconomic policies and strong
adjustment programs in the quest for economic stability and
growth. These are the essential preconditions for external finance.
When governments have the courage and farsightedness to make
deep-seated, sustained, and credible changes, the international
community should be ready to respond by providing swift, strong,
and reliable financial support and by helping to reduce the
sometimes painful impact of adjustment on individuals-particu-
larly on the poor.
Savings and Investment Efficiency
An important priority for most developing countries is to raise
savings and investment rates, so as to use the energies of their
people to the fullest. The developing countries that grew fastest
and most consistently over the past twenty years were those that
managed to sustain savings and investment at high levels-a
quarter or more of gross domestic product. Even more important,
the rapidly growing developing countries used their resources more
efficiently. If developing countries are to make up lost ground, what
needs to be done is clear.
7


Reforming the Financial System
The financial systems of developing countries often hold the key
to economic growth. If financial institutions are undeveloped,
mistrusted, or shackled by inappropriate controls, they cannot
mobilize savings efficiently and cannot allocate them to the most
productive use.
This year's World Development Report shows that the economic
shocks of the 1980s have combined with bad government policies
to undermine financial systems to a dangerous degree. Govern-
ments have weakened banks by controlling the allocation of credit,
and they have disguised public sector deficits by recourse to the
banking system. In many countries, the so-called quasi-fiscal deficit
has become a major source of financial instability and inflation.
And weak regulations have made it all too easy for banks to
compound past lending mistakes by throwing good money after
bad.
These are not arcane technical problems: they inflict massive
human damage. Because of them, people find their savings rendered
worthless, the prices of everyday necessities running wildly out of
control, and vital public services-such as schools and health
clinics-decaying for want of resources. Financial stability is a
quality-of-life issue, too.
To tackle these difficulties, interest rates need to be progressively
freed. This will guide scarce savings to their most productive use.
Many countries also need to reduce financial restrictions. At the
same time, they require stronger regulation and legal and account-
ing standards. Competition should be strengthened to ensure that
savers and entrepreneurs do not face financial monopolies serving
entrenched interests. The Bank is assisting reforms of this sort
through its financial sector lending. And IFC is helping several
countries to establish securities markets and the financial institu-
tions that will operate in them.
8


Using Public Money Rationally
If countries are to grow and to harness that growth to the quality
of life, governments must make better use of the resources they
themselves claim from the economy. This means sound public
finance.
Many countries will have to endure prolonged fiscal austerity
during the 1990s. The capacity of the public sector will continue
to be severely constrained. This forces all of us-in industrial as
well as developing countries-to think afresh about priorities and
about the productivity and equity of taxation and spending.
Public sector deficits must not be allowed to continue fueling
inflation and to crowd out the private investments that are essential
to drive renewed growth. Governments need to take a fresh look
at the efficiency and equity of taxes-at how to broaden the tax
base, reduce excessive burdens on productive people, phase out
special exemptions, and rely less on trade taxes that distort
incentives against exports. In short, the pursuit of sound public
finances must not mean imposing ever-higher taxes on sections of
the population whose productivity is discouraged by an unfair or
excessive tax burden. Instead, the causes of fiscal deficits must be
brought under control.
When resources are tight, governments have a particular duty to
look more closely at the effectiveness-and the equitable use-of
the money they spend. Developing countries need to use public
funds for building functioning school systems, not white elephant
projects in industry. They need to adequately maintain essential
services, not to expand public employment beyond the numbers
that can be decently paid and effectively used. They need govern-
ments to provide essential urban infrastructure, not to divert scarce
resources to luxuries for select groups. Better ways must be found
for public expenditure to complement and spur private production,
not to displace it.
9


Debt Reduction and Sound Policies
Another important way to ensure that developing countries get the
external resources they need is to bring their indebtedness-in those
cases where it is a binding constraint-down to manageable
proportions. You, our shareholders, have put the Bank and the
Fund at the center of international efforts.
We have seen breakthroughs in the debt strategy in the last year,
from the Toronto Summit agreement to the Brady initiative. These
developments are welcome and encouraging. They strengthen our
collective ability to respond to each country flexibly, according to
need and merit.
We are far from the end of the debt crisis. New solutions continue
to be needed for each country. The financial, regulatory, and other
problems that Third World debt poses will continue to be a
challenge to our collective creativity.
Military Expenditure
As we think about the tasks of development in the coming years,
we can no longer neglect a sensitive component of the fiscal
problem: military spending. All countries have the sovereign right
and responsibility to defend themselves. But let us hope that, in
the changing political climate of the 1990s, resources are increas-
ingly allocated to more productive purposes, in industrial countries
as well as developing countries.
Although there is much variation among developing countries, as
a group low-income countries currently allocate around 20 percent
of central government budgets to defense. In the mid-1980s military
spending in developing countries exceeded spending on health and
education combined. At a time when many components of national
budgets have been cut, the $200 billion that the developing world
spends annually on the military has largely been protected. And
arms are often a prime source of external debt: military debt
accounts for a third or more of total debt service in several large
developing countries.
10


Developing countries on one side, and their arms suppliers and
creditors on the other, must adapt to a world where budgets are
tight. It is important to place military spending decisions on the
same footing as other fiscal decisions, to examine possible tradeoffs
more systematically, and to explore ways to bring military spending
into better balance with development priorities. In evaluating their
military expenditures, governments should be realistic, but they
also should remember the human consequences of these choices.
The Bank's Operational Role
Steady effort in all these directions can dramatically improve
developing countries' prospects in the 1990s by creating new
opportunities for the enterprise of their citizens.
The Bank will use its strengths flexibly to support these efforts by
our members. We will retain our capacity for rapid disbursement
of finance. This commitment is evident in our adjustment programs
and in the financial support the Bank is extending for debt
reduction. Adjustment lending and debt reduction operations will
continue to play a critical role in our support for Sub-Saharan
Africa and the heavily indebted countries.
As we move into the 1990s, the Bank also will stress increasingly
our core business: supporting efficient, long-term investment that
multiplies domestic entrepreneurial energies and productivity and
directly addresses the needs of poor people.
We can best do that by lending which promotes better economic
policies, rational investment priorities, and the development of
human resources in key sectors; which creates productive assets of
high quality, and which is a catalyst for other private and public
development finance. We will seek other opportunities to play this
catalytic investment role in our regular lending program, in our
aid coordination activities, and in the Bank Group's expanding
collaboration with the private sector.
The Bank's role as a promoter of efficiency and of market-oriented
investment will be particularly important in the complex task of
11


reforming centrally planned economies, as changes in these coun-
tries develop. We have a responsibility to maintain support for
badly needed structural change in all countries, even when political
conditions make that difficult. The Bank has a substantial involve-
ment in several socialist countries, and our knowledge of the
challenges of reform in these economies has greatly expanded. But
there are few precedents to guide the reformers, and the economic
and political uncertainties are formidable. We are strengthening
our knowledge, and we will continue to build our programs in
collaboration with others and in line with the progress that these
countries achieve.
Priorities for the Next Decade: Environment and Individual Lives
As all of us here think about development priorities in the coming
decade, we should focus both on costs and resources, as well as
on goals and ideals that are worthy of the great effort that will be
needed. We must dare to be visionaries, even as we strive to be
prudent treasurers. This is, perhaps, the hardest challenge of all.
In the coming decade it will be impossible to improve the quality
of life in developing and industrial countries alike unless we do
much more to conserve our global environment. We must deal with
population problems, with energy needs, and with sustainable
agriculture. But we cannot do so by choking off the hopes of poor
people and poor countries. We must protect the environmental
quality of life in the fullest sense-by extending economic choice
and opportunity, by ensuring strong economic growth, and by
reducing mass poverty in the developing world.
The Expanded Bank Environment Effort
We are all very much aware of the great environmental challenges
facing the world. The Bank is taking new initiatives in what is now
a common international effort. We are urgently adding to our skills
and knowledge, and we have greatly expanded the environmental
values in our lending. A third of all our projects, half of our energy
projects, and almost two-thirds of our agricultural projects last
fiscal year contained specific environmental components. We will
12


lend $1.3 billion for free-standing environmental projects over the
next few years and will triple our forestry lending.
The Bank has greatly expanded collaborative work on the design
and financing of environmental programs. We are actively involved
in joint programs with member governments and with others, such
as the United Nations Environment Program, the European Invest-
ment Bank, and the regional development banks. As part of these
efforts, we are building the foundations for better management of
tropical forests in Ghana and Sri Lanka, for stronger protection
from pollution of water supply and coastal waters in Chile and
Yugoslavia, and for international collaboration on schemes such as
the Environmental Program for the Mediterranean and the Asian
Capital Cities Clean-Up Project. These are just a few examples.
My main purpose today, however, is not to report on our current
programs. Instead, I wish to emphasize what I see as the key
environmental task for the coming decade: to bring together the
world's need for collective environmental security and the need of
poor people to be able to choose better lives for themselves and
their families.
Population Policy
Nowhere is the connection between poverty, individual potential,
and the environment more dramatic than in population policy.
Rapid expansion of population endangers growth of individual
incomes and improvement of the quality of individual lives.
This is not only, or even primarily, an aggregate problem of "too
many people." The real concern is that excessive population growth
puts heavy, sometimes intolerable, strain on the pressure points of
urban and rural environments that are least able to bear it. The
consequence is to further undermine the ability of hundreds of
millions of people to escape from poverty.
The solution to this exceptionally difficult and sensitive problem
does not lie in attempts at massive social engineering by govern-
ments or by the international community. Population figures reflect
13


decisions by millions of individuals and couples as they confront
the everyday realities of life: work, health, the survival chances and
economic prospects of prospective children, their own old age. But
we can help to make available to women, and to men, the ability
to make decisions that will meet the needs of individual families
and serve the wider society as well.
No single step will provide the answer. Approaches must be
adapted to each country's circumstances. Direct support for family
planning programs and policies is essential and must go hand in
hand with action to increase productivity and welfare-especially
for women-through better access to education and health services,
better jobs, and higher incomes.
Greater access to family planning information and services can be
provided through many different channels: through governments'
primary health care services, through the private sector, and
through voluntary organizations. Countries such as Botswana,
Indonesia, and Zimbabwe have demonstrated that family planning
programs work-not only as an instrument of population policy,
but as a way to improve the welfare of everybody-men, women,
and children. Indonesia's family planning program has grown from
a coverage of 50,000 couples to over 17 million couples in less than
twenty years. Zimbabwe and Botswana have stressed human
resource development, along with family planning. As a result,
many of their people are educated, health services are widely
available, and mortality is among the lowest in Africa. Other
countries with active family planning programs have been equally
successful.
Helping to reduce population growth is a priority for the Bank.
We lent over half a billion dollars for population projects during
the past five years. We expect to raise this level to $800 million in
the next three years. This constitutes nearly a tripling of our
population lending on an annual basis.
Families need to feel confident that their children will survive and
lead better lives. Households need the assurance of economic
14


well-being, which comes with secure property rights, a decent
education, and basic income-generating skills. Poor people-espe-
cially when they live in environmentally or economically precarious
conditions-need to be able to spread their risks, to take advantage
of economic opportunities, and above all to have secure access to
food.
Sustainable Agriculture
This brings me to a second fundamental environmental task for
the decade ahead: the promotion of sustainable agriculture. Despite
the growth of cities, the coming decade will see many more people
in the rural areas of Africa and Asia and an even larger growth in
the workforce that rural areas will have to absorb on and off the
farm.
Governments will face these pressures-and the accompanying
degradation of natural resources-with little prospect of a leap in
yields such as the green revolution provided twenty years ago. We
have to find ways of raising farm output that are within reach of
poor people-techniques that do not rely too much on chemical
inputs and engineering investments. Otherwise, the present fright-
ening rates of soil and water depletion will continue, and the
livelihoods of millions of people, from the Yangtse River system
to the African savannah, will be endangered.
Government policies must play a major role. Underpricing of
chemical fertilizers and pesticides can lead to poisonous over-use
and can discourage better methods of restoring essential nitrogen
to the soil and of controlling pests. Improper pricing of water leads
to waste. Subsidized electricity results in overpumping of ground-
water aquifers. Unrealistic stumpage rates lead to overcutting
rather than conservation of forests.
Changes in such policies should aim to reflect the true economic
value of land and water resources. Reform would save governments
money that they now spend on subsidies and incentives, and it
would also encourage the better use of all the resources that
contribute to agricultural growth.
15


In dealing with the new challenges of sustainable agriculture, we
must always be willing to re-examine existing attitudes and
conventional wisdom. For instance, experts in the field of agricul-
tural development are beginning to pay more attention to the ability
of small-scale farming to spread risks and conserve biodiversity.
We need to support small farmers by promoting the broader
application of some basic "benign" technologies. We need to
reinforce the diversity of such farms, rather than encourage
dependence on a single crop.
In agriculture, as in the population issue, there is a strong link
between policy reform, improving the incomes and economic
security of poor people, and safeguarding the environment. If we
can forge those links effectively and increase attention to nutrition
and health, we can in the upcoming decade make great progress
toward ending hunger in the world.
The Importance of Education
Development must expand people's horizons. It must expand
opportunities-but it must also endow each individual with skills
and with knowledge of how the world works, so that those
opportunities can be seized. People, as I have said before, are our
most precious resource.
In the new century the dividends from knowledge will grow
dramatically as the penalties of ignorance increase. Much of the
gulf between misery and opportunity, squalor and hope, can be
bridged by education, by investing in the bright inquisitiveness of
children and the thirst for knowledge of enterprising adults.
Education, and human resource development more broadly, must
be a central focus of the development effort in the 1990s. Education
adds to the choices people can make. At the very least we must
ensure the availability of primary education for all children, boys
and girls alike. In this the World Bank will play a growing part.
16


The Global Need for Cleaner Energy
So far I have talked of environmental problems that are essentially
national in character: they mainly affect the quality of individual
and community life within countries, and their solution lies within
the grasp of national authorities. But in the new decade the world
must also deal much more effectively with problems that are
regional and global in reach-acid rain, ocean pollution, nuclear
hazards, ozone depletion, climate change.
At the heart of many of these global problems is energy. This is a
vital issue for developing countries, given their vast energy needs.
Fossil fuels are the main source of the gases that may produce
long-term global warming and changes in the climate. If these
changes occur, the poor in developing countries would be the least
able to cope.
Most of these fuels are now burned in industrial countries.
Industrial countries account for over 75 percent of carbon dioxide
emissions, the main cause of global warming. And virtually all of
the chlorofluorocarbons escaping into the atmosphere and deplet-
ing the ozone layer come from industrial countries. Clearly,
therefore, the major responsibility to reduce emissions rests there.
But plans for electrification and industrialization of major devel-
oping nations over the next decade call for big increases in the
burning of coal, the least carbon-efficient of the fossil fuels. If
present trends continue, the developing world will double its share
of carbon dioxide emissions from coal-fired power plants by the
turn of the century-in contrast to the strong move away from
coal-based power generation in industrial countries. China and
India alone plan coal-based thermal power plants with a combined
capacity around 150,000 megawatts. Wood burning for land
clearance and fuel is another potent source of developing countries'
emissions of greenhouse gases.
17


If the danger of global warming from present and future energy
use is to be reduced, international cooperation will be indispen-
sable. We cannot now know the precise timing or extent of the
threat. But we cannot let that be an excuse for inaction.
Greater efficiency in the use of energy is a fundamental requirement
for all countries and is amply justified on purely economic grounds.
Too many countries still subsidize the profligate and environmen-
tally harmful use of energy by industry and by households and
provide few incentives for the introduction of more efficient
technologies. A complementary approach in the 1990s would be to
encourage the use of gas, a plentiful and relatively clean fuel, while
vigorously pursuing research and development of more ambitious
energy alternatives for the new century. Taken together, increased
efficiency and increased use of cleaner fuels could greatly reduce
greenhouse gas emissions from developing country plants-perhaps
by as much as a third by the end of the century.
Energy is vital to development. We cannot turn our backs on the
needs of the poor countries. Unlike industrial countries-which, as
we all know, are the source of most of the environmental damage
in the world today-developing countries cannot forgo growth or
switch to more expensive fuels without help. Unless the necessary
resources are made available, they will be compelled to use energy
sources that seem cheapest in the short term. In the same way, poor
people cannot switch to cleaner and more efficient means of
cooking and heating unless new technologies are brought within
their economic grasp.
Closer international collaboration is needed to tackle these growing
problems of the global environment. Industrial countries should
accept their own long-neglected responsibilities and put their
environmental house in order. Developing countries need to put
aside any remaining defensiveness and recognize that determined
action is in their own national interest. The key will be to think
globally and act locally. If that can be done, we will help the
developing countries to avoid repeating the damaging mistakes of
18


the industrialized world. Extending the necessary help to make this
possible is in all our interests.
Shared Responsibilities for the 1990s
My address today has been about the basic goal of development-
enhancing the quality of hundreds of millions of individual human
lives. No amount of statistical argument will help the cause of
development, unless individuals find better lives.
Our work, in the words of Pericles, must be "woven into the stuff
of other lives." This is what makes development work challenging
and singularly exciting. If the international community can con-
centrate its effort on that simple and inspiring goal, the 1990s can
be a decade of great hope and achievement.
I have argued that we must build on the new atmosphere of reduced
international tension and the emergence of more pluralistic societies
to create a more open world economy, in which developing
countries can participate as productive and efficient partners.
Despite the scarcity of additional external finance, we must
creatively mobilize resources and ensure that these are used for
high-priority investments and social services. We must meet the
growing environmental challenge through closer international co-
operation and by expanding the opportunities and economic
freedoms of people everywhere, particularly the poor.
All this requires action now--on development resources and
growth, on population and education, on renewed agricultural
development, on preserving our common global heritage-if we
are not to return to these meetings year after year to review an
ever-worsening picture.
If we do act, I believe we can help developing countries to assume
fuller responsibility for their own economic destinies, even as they
participate more actively in a growing global economy.
We can reduce poverty and protect the environment in ways that
respect the rights and hopes of individual people.
19


We can meet the global environmental challenge while respecting
the sovereignty of poor countries.
And we can encourage greater diversity in economic and social
institutions, so that the abilities of every single one of us can
flourish and enhance all our lives, and not be stifled or brushed
aside.
If we do act effectively together, I believe we will be able to look
back on this time as a turning point. We will have laid the ground
for nations and peoples to work together in building an efficient,
peaceful, and unpolluted world economy.
In tackling the problems of the coming decade, the World Bank is
just one institution-but a powerful and resourceful one. In
partnership with other multilateral institutions and with you, our
shareholders, we will meet the challenge.
20


I


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