PHM-Exch> Why Ocampo, not Kim,should be next World Bank president

[Claudio Schuftan]

 K. Gallagher.

Emerging countries have gone on the offensive to put an end to the

wink-wink succession rule whereby Europeans get to choose who

heads the International Monetary Fund and the US picks the president
of the World Bank.



Countries are expected to nominate at least two candidates:

Okonjo-Iweala, the Nigerian finance minister, and Jose Antonio Ocampo,
former finance minister of Colombia. If the decision is finally based
on merit, as it should be, Ocampo will win: he is far and away better
than any on the list of credible names, including President Barack
Obama’s nominee, Jim Yong Kim.



Ocampo has the utmost credibility as a policy-maker and diplomat; he =

Works well with the US and developing countries alike; and he is one
of the leading academic economists in the field of development.



He is known as a former finance minister but he also served Colombia as

minister of agriculture and minister of planning. He has intimate

knowledge and experience working with both small and large farmers and
on infrastructure and investment projects needed for sustainable
growth.

This experience will be essential given the current global food crisis.



As finance minister of Colombia he helped the country weather the =

effects of financial crises in Asia and Latin America. Indeed, he
crafted unique and effective measures such as unremunerated reserve
requirements whereby foreign investors had to park a certain amount of
their capital at the Central Bank. He is now a member of a high-level
task-force-on-regulating-global-capital flows that aims to help
nations prevent and mitigate future crises.



Ocampo won points from the US for these efforts and for collaborating =

With it on a clamp-down on drug-related money-laundering. Colombia is =

Arguably the closest partner in South America and Ocampo has earned the

trust of Americans at the highest level. The significance of this
should not be overlooked given that it is the US that would have to

World Bank seat.
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