World Bank Sees Private Sector as Key to Ending Extreme Poverty

Today, at the Conference de Montreal, I had the pleasure of meeting with Dr. Jim Yong Kim, President of the World Bank to discuss the World Bank’s strategy of ending extreme poverty by 2030. Dr. Kim, a former medical practitioner with a distinguished humanitarian record in the area of public health, provided a compelling case for the private sector’s essential role in achieving the Bank’s objective.

I was encouraged to hear that over the past two decades, the share of the population living on under $1 per day has been halved—with 70% of this directly attributable to economic growth. To build on this success, the World Bank will continue to work with developing countries to improve the climate for business and growth and to provide risk mitigation tools to help international companies invest in these challenging, but high-potential markets. Dr. Kim outlined the many ways Canadian companies and investors can get involved in these opportunities.

The Canadian Chamber calls on the Canadian government to support this mandate and to see how similar approaches might apply to Canada’s international development policy, as the government seeks to identify synergies between our development and trade agendas. For our part, we are pleased to have recently supported a delegation of our members to join Julian Fantino, Minister for International Cooperation, on a recent trip to Washington, D.C. to meet with senior World Bank officials.

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Dispatches from Washington
This series, written by Paul Frazer, the Canadian Chamber of Commerce’s Washington, DC-based Special Advisor on Canada-U.S. relations, provides briefs on issues and events that have implication for Canadian businesses. Mr. Frazer has almost 20 years of experience in this area and is a well-known and influential player in Canada-U.S. issues. Mr. Frazer can be contacted at Paul.Frazer@3ClickSolutions.com.

 

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