Mexico City - The tradition of automatically giving the
World Bank presidency to an American is outdated, although the country should
be free to put forward a candidate, Finance Minister Pravin
Gordhan said on Saturday on the sidelines of the G20 meeting.
"The World Bank presidency should be open to all
nationalities and based on merit," Gordhan told Reuters. "It is time
we break the traditions of the US and Europe sharing the two seats (for the
heads of the International Monetary Fund and World Bank) and amongst all of us we must try harder this
time to find some consensus."
Brics
The world's major emerging economies rejected the tradition
that an American automatically is selected to head the World Bank and they will
look at putting forward their own candidate for the open job.
Finance chiefs from the Brics group of emerging market
powerhouses - Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa - met on the
sidelines of a G20 meeting in Mexico City and agreed the top World Bank job
should be open to all countries.
"Candidates should be based on merit and not on
nationality," Brazilian Finance Minister Guido Mantega told reporters.
Another Brics official said the group will discuss the
possibility of putting up their own candidate to challenge whoever the US
government nominates. "Certainly it is a discussion we will have."
Countries have until March 23 to submit names for the top
post and a decision is likely by April meetings of the World Bank and IMF.
Americans have held the top job since the World Bank was set
up at the end of the Second World War but the unwritten rule has in recent
years faced more resistance along with the tradition that a European heads the IMF, as emerging economies gain more economic clout.
Robert Zoellick, the current World Bank president, plans to
step down at the end of June after deciding against seeking a second five-year
term.
The United States has said it will nominate a replacement
candidate but has not yet said who it will be.
Possible candidates are thought to include former US
treasury secretary Lawrence Summers, current Secretary of State Hillary
Clinton, and Susan Rice, the US ambassador to the United Nations. The State
Department has said Clinton would not be taking the job.
The World Bank is the leading provider of development aid to
poorer countries and its president is one of the world's top policymakers.
"They can put forward their candidate," Gordhan
said, referring to the United States. "But rather than it becoming a
destructive exercise, it should be a constructive process so that we attempt to
build consensus on who the candidate should be. It is idealistic but let's give
it a shot."