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Zoellick: Crisis remaking global power relations

(Xinhua)
Updated: 2009-09-28 23:49

WASHINGTON: World Bank President Robert B. Zoellick said on Monday that the global economic crisis is contributing to shifts in power relations in the world that will impact currency markets, monetary policy, trade relations and the role of developing countries.

In a speech ahead of the Annual Meetings in Istanbul, Turkey, of the World Bank and International Monetary Fund (IMF), Zoellick said leaders should reshape the multilateral system and forge a "responsible globalization" that would encourage balanced global growth and financial stability, embrace global efforts to counter climate change, and advance opportunity for the poorest.

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"The old international economic order was struggling to keep up with change before the crisis," Zoellick told an audience at the Paul H. Nitze School of Advanced International Studies of the Johns Hopkins University, in Washington, D.C.

"Today's upheaval has revealed the stark gaps and compelling needs. It is time we caught up and moved ahead," he said.

In the speech entitled "After the Crisis?" Zoellick said: "Peer review of a new Framework for Strong, Sustainable and Balanced Growth agreed at last week's G20 Summit is a good start, but it will require a new level of international cooperation and coordination, including a new willingness to take the findings of global monitoring seriously. Peer review will need to be peer pressure."