By IANS,
Istanbul : Finance Minister Pranab Mukherjee Monday asked rich nations to deliver on the promise made at the G20 Summit in Pittsburgh to step up voting rights of emerging economies like India in multilateral lending institutions.
“Economic weight must be the primary criteria in any methodology for realignment,” the finance minister told a meeting of the Development Committee of the World Bank here, which was attended by key economic policy makers and central bank governors from across the globe.
Having committed $10 billion toward India’s share in the additional capital of the International Monetary Fund (IMF), Mukherjee said purchasing power parity must be the most relevant measure in deciding the voting rights in multilateral funding agencies.
For the $1.2-trillion Indian economy, the per capita income may still be low because of its huge population of 1.17 billion, but based on the purchasing power parity, it ranks among the top five emerging economies.
Mukherjee conveyed his strong support for increasing the capital base of both the World Bank and the International Finance Corp and applauded their responses to the current economic crisis, but also warned against any complacency, given the uncertain trajectory of recovery.
In Pittsburgh, Prime Minister Manmohan Singh had said India will get greater voting rights in the Bretton Woods institution along with other developing countries, which was also reflected in the final statement from the G20 leaders.
“The distribution of quotas should reflect the relative weights of its members in the world economy,” said the leaders’ statement, even though it fell marginally short of India’s expectations.
“It is a compromise figure,” the prime minister later said. “Our demand was for 7 percent and we got 5 percent,” he said, adding: “We now have to address the issue of quota increase by early 2011. We have agreed to shift 5 percent to countries that are under-represented.”