英语访谈节目:世界银行宣布在2030年结束极端贫困的目标

JEFFREY BROWN:And then what? What do you want them to do?

JIM YONG KIM:Well, we're going to be very specific about it. And we have been specific about it for years.

We believe that the evidence shows us—and certainly the Arab spring countries have shown us this—that if you have GDP growth without inclusion, you're building instability into your societies. And we feel that the evidence is overwhelming that putting women at the center of the development process, for example, is smart economics. That's what you should be doing.

So it's not—we're going to measure growth. We're going to measure participation in growth. We're going to measure poverty. But the things that you need to do to get there are varied. And what we know is that if you don't invest in health, education, social protection, you're not really being very visionary about what it's going to take to grow your economy in the future.

That message is very strong, and I think people are hearing it from us.

JEFFREY BROWN:Does this require new money? Because you're making this call at a time of slow growth in much of the world, negative growth in Europe, for example.

What do you need from other countries, and how would you get it at a time like this?

JIM YONG KIM:Well, if you look at the needs in the world, official development assistance, which is the money that donor countries give, is about $125 billion dollars a year.

But let's look at just one country, India. I was just back from India. They have a one trillion dollar infrastructure deficit over the next five years. So there's no way that official development assistance is going to be enough to tackle this problem. This is one of the great strengths of the World Bank Group.

We not only work in the public sector with development assistance, but we work in the private sector. We make direct investments. We make loans.

It's going to take a major effort of bringing public and private together if we're to have any chance of meeting these targets.

JEFFREY BROWN:Are you afraid that the world might fall backwards? There's been a lot of strides in the last couple of decades through China and other countries with poverty. We have had a number of years of very slow growth. Are you afraid now that we might be moving backwards?

JIM YONG KIM:We remain cautiously optimistic about what could happen in the future.

We know that the developed economies have to grow in order for us to be able to meet our targets in the developing economies. But the growth in the developing economies has been one of the good news stories over the last five years. More than 50 percent of the growth globally has come from the developing economies. And this year, they are going to grow at 5.5 percent.

Part of it is because many of those countries have made tough decisions over the past 15, 20 years around fiscal consolidation, around investing in health and education, so they could lay the foundations for future growth.

JEFFREY BROWN:Well, you know, one of the questions as you gather here is whether the World Bank is even relevant anymore, right? You had a number of countries that have grown and made great strides.

There are other areas where they can seek investment now than the bank. What's the case for the continued relevance of the bank, World Bank?

JIM YONG KIM:You know, the BRICS countries, being Brazil, Russia, India, China, and South Africa, the most high-profile, if you will, middle-income countries, the experience that I have had in going to each of those countries is that they don't want less of the World Bank; they want more of the World Bank.

And it's not so much that they need our money, but what they need is our expertise and it's our very specific ability to work in the public sector, in the private sector. And we also provide political guarantees. So if you make an investment in a country, and that company's nationalized, we actually provide insurance, which is helping people to feel comfortable making the kinds of investments in developing countries that are needed.

We have had 66 years of experience. We have gone through so many different conflicts in order to get to a place where the 188-member countries agree on where we should go and agree about the fundamental relevance of the World Bank Group.

There will always be a need for our knowledge. There will always be a need for our ability to work across public and private sectors. There will always be a need for us as a neutral agent in a very contentious environment.

JEFFREY BROWN:Let me just ask you finally about you personally, because World Bank presidents to this point have traditionally been from political backgrounds, from economic backgrounds, financial backgrounds.

You're a doctor. You have spent your life in public health. What do you bring to this that is different?

JIM YONG KIM:Well, for almost all of my adult life, I have been working in the area of development.

I have worked in Haiti. I have worked in the slums of Lima, Peru. I have worked in the Soviet—the former Soviet Union countries. I have worked in Tomsk in Siberia. So I have been doing development my entire life.

And the World Bank is a development bank. Our focus is on trying to help lift people out of poverty and to boost prosperity, a prosperity that's shared. And that's essentially what I have been doing all my life as an anthropologist and a physician. So I have been trying to fight poverty my whole life.

And what I have found is that inside the World Bank, we are just full of passion, that people in the World Bank want to end poverty. That's why they came to work at the World Bank. And because we share such fundamental values, we hope that we can be ever more effective in the years ahead.

JEFFREY BROWN:All right, World Bank President Dr. Kim, thanks for talking to us.

JIM YONG KIM:Thanks, Jeff.

JEFFREY BROWN:Dr. Kim has also promised a strong new effort to combat climate change, especially in the developing world. You can find that part of our conversation online.