Good Debut In Washington

On the issues which were actually the business of the meetings, Chidambaram also talked sense. He supported the proposal for debt relief to heavily-indebted poorest countries, mostly in Africa, but sounded the natural concern of a developing country which is paying its dues and borrowing heavily from multilateral institutions. He is right that bad behaviour by debtors should not be unduly rewarded by the institutions, which would then rapidly lose their credit rating and their usefulness. Chidambaram received a warm welcome when he asked the World Bank president, Mr James Wolfensohn, for suggestions on how to improve project implementation and thus reduce the $9.4 billion total of undisbursed Bank loan commitments to India. And Wolfensohn indicated that the World Bank was looking at ways to finance the private sector without a sovereign guarantee