World Bank President Paul Wolfowitz Meets with President Fox

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"Mexico has a lot to be proud of, particularly what it has accomplished in overall economic policy and a number of innovations which aim to reduce poverty,"said Wolfowitz immediately following the meeting at Los Pinos.

During the meeting, President Fox and Mr. Wolfowitz exchanged views on competitiveness and growth as key elements to creating new and better jobs and fighting poverty and inequality more effectively.

Speaking on the relationship between Mexico and the World Bank, Mr. Wolfowitz says he received: "…an excellent presentation on what Mexican authorities hope to do with World Bank support and to study how to improve competitiveness in Mexico, which is clearly going to be one of the challenges in the next stage of Mexico’s development," said Wolfowitz.

Mr. Wolfowitz arrived this morning in Mexico City on his first official visit to the country and the second to Latin America as President of the World Bank. Earlier today he saw first hand what the country is doing to improve transparency and governance. He visited the Ministry of Public Administration where he learned about the government’s anti-corruption programs as well as the Federal Institute for Access to Information (Instituto Federal de Acceso a la Informacion – IFAI), an autonomous agency which provides citizens with access to public information.

Tomorrow the World Bank President will travel to Monterrey, in the Northern State of Nuevo Leon, to see what the country is doing to improve innovation, competitiveness and the investment climate. Mr. Wolfowitz will also visit the Southern State of Guerrero, one of the poorest in the country, where he will go to poor municipalities and meet with indigenous groups and young farmers.

Mexico is one of the Bank’s largest borrowers with 19 active Bank projects representing $3.3 billion in net commitments for education, finance, agriculture, health and infrastructure, and six Global Environment Facility (GEF) grants of about $80 million.

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