A Chance to Alleviate Poverty in Our Lifetime

Distinguished participants, my fellow panelists, friends. I am honored to have this opportunity to make a few closing remarks. Before doing so, I’d like to mention that the President of the World Bank, Paul Wolfowitz, has asked me convey his heartfelt thanks to Her Majesty’s Government, the Asian Development Bank, and all our Asian partners, for helping bring the dream of an Asia free of poverty closer to reality.

This has been an extraordinary two days.

The conference has confirmed my belief that we are at a point in Asia when, with the right policy approaches, and with a development partnership that is meaningful, effective and generous, we have the best chance of alleviating massive poverty in our lifetime. That is why I think this conference has come at such an opportune time.For its part, the World Bank remains fully committed to scaling up our knowledge and financial assistance, to achieve the goals exemplified by the title of this conference:"Promoting Growth, Ending Poverty."

In these closing remarks, I would like to dwell briefly on how what we have been discussing will help us refine this strategy.As we have heard in the past two days, on present growth trends, Asia will meet the Millennium Development Goal of halving poverty. If the growth rate accelerates to 10 percent, we will see a region substantially free of poverty by 2015.

But to get there, the challenges are awe-inspiring. Accelerating growth, or even sustaining it, will require addressing the region’s vast rural and urban "infrastructure deficits” and improving the climate for investment. [We estimate, for example, that East Asia will need 200 billion dollars in investment over the next year, which is as much as the city of Mumbai alone will need over the next 15 years.] Along with growth, we must tackle the deep human deprivation in parts of Asia, especially for disadvantaged populations and children. Malnutrition remains pervasive, and, in recent years, maternal and child mortality have hardly improved in many Asian countries. And faster growth must be more equitably shared—between states and regions, between communities, and between households.

This combination of promising economic performance and profound development challenges represents a unique opportunity for all of us, and certainly for the World Bank. So what are our priorities looking ahead? Accelerated growth and faster human development are the two pillars of the Bank’s strategy, and I was pleased to hear a lot of consensus around these two broad themes. Raising GDP growth to 8% per year and beyond is critical for deeper poverty reduction in the region. The macro fundamentals are largely in place for this, but must be maintained (as Nick Stern reminded us), and the need is for special attention to key public and private investments in infrastructure, to the investment climate, and to improved governance. In helping forge public-private partnerships to meet these needs, our goal is not simply to help build new infrastructure assets but, more importantly, to help build institutions that can maintain these assets and deliver services.

But as Sri Mulyani Indrawati reminded us, despite growth Asian countries progress on some Human Development outcomes remains poor, and as she went on, progress in this regard depends on the delivery of basic services—such as health, education, water, sanitation, energy and rural roads. As we heard, these services often fail poor people in access and quality. Making these services work for poor people will require innovations to improve public accountability for services, measures such as contracting out schools or clinics, and involving local governments and communities in monitoring and management. The points made by Fazle Abed, Vrinda Swarup and others will help us greatly in fine-tuning this strategy.

As Ravi Kanbur and Bina Agarwal told us, we must invest in those who have been excluded from the growth and development process in Asia. We must help improve health and education outcomes and employment opportunities for girls, women, ethnic and religious minorities, and members of discriminated castes, such as the dalits. We cannot any longer ignore lagging regions, be they in India, Indonesia or China. Even though politically often difficult, we must engage with them to find common ground in ideas and assistance that can improve growth and human development.

The cornerstones of implementing the Bank’s strategy are learning and partnerships. We are drawing on lessons from other Asian countries, as well as other countries around the globe, and helping governments to adapt them to their local circumstances. As Vrinda Swarup mentioned, education teams from India are constantly going to Bangladesh to find out how they’ve been so successful in primary and secondary education, especially for girls.

On partnerships, we are piloting joint country assistance strategies with bilateral and multilateral partners in Bangladesh and Cambodia. Vietnam is a good-practice example of implementing the Paris declaration on donor harmonization and managing for results. We are pleased to be co-sponsoring this conference with the ADB and DFID. And we look to the 2006 Bank-Fund Annual Meetings in Singapore as a culmination of a series of events such as this one that will bring development partners and Asian societies together to re-affirm that the 21st century will be, in Hilary Benn’s words, "Asia’s century."

I’d like to end with three observations about what has fundamentally changed on the ground in Asia:

• There is today much greater awareness in each country of how critical the investment climate is for sustainable growth—and how consistent, predictable domestic policies, efficient infrastructure services and resource efficiency can shape that climate.
• Having tasted the fruits of faster growth, Asians are lobbying for a strong but deft policy hand that can accelerate growth, human development and poverty reduction, and do it in partnership with the private sector and NGOs.
• And there is growing recognition of the challenge of equity and inclusion, be it for women and girls, marginalized minorities, or political factions in deep conflict.

As Asian countries, other development partners and the World Bank increasingly turn to these problems, we are humbled by the challenge. But the energy, dynamism and creativity expressed at this conference give us confidence that our aid and knowledge assistance are needed and productive in Asia—and our strategy of scaling up on both is the right one.

Thank you.