October 4, 2009—India announced it will join a growing number of countries contributing to a World Bank financing facility that provides quick, just-in-time funding for developing countries to share their knowledge and expertise.

Finance Minister Pranab Mukherjee said India could both contribute its own development know-how and learn from the experiences of other countries. “I believe that the people of the South have much to learn from the experience of each other,” he told a gathering at the World Bank Annual Meetings in Istanbul.

More than 70 high-level representatives attended the gathering, at which practitioners from Jamaica, Nigeria and India explained how South-South exchanges helped them navigate the process of implementing difficult reforms.

India’s decision comes on the first year anniversary of the launch of the South-South Exchange Facility (SEETF), a multi-donor trust fund that promotes projects that put into practice the concept that developing countries can and should learn from each other. Mukherjee did not say how much India would contribute to the trust fund, but said a decision would be made soon.

Mukherjee’s announcement follows Denmark’s decision to contribute an additional $1 million to the facility. China, Mexico, the Netherlands, Spain and the United Kingdom have also contributed to the fund.

World Bank Group Managing Director Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala said demand for the facility from low-income countries has been high. “The facility has achieved clear results, with grants from the multi-donor trust fund allowing developing countries to develop new thinking and new initiatives to help promote skills, jobs and reduce poverty,” Okonjo-Iweala said.

Okonjo-Iweala also announced that she would transfer management of the trust fund to the World Bank Institute, the part of the Bank that focuses on capacity development and knowledge exchange. WBI is launching new instruments to facilitate transfers of practical experiences among developing countries. WBI will manage the fund in collaboration with the Bank’s Partnerships and Concessional Finance group.

WBI’s new platform for South-South exchange aims to capture solutions that work so they can be replicated and adapted to other countries. “One great catalyst of change is when practitioners get inspired by other practitioners,” said WBI Vice President Sanjay Pradhan. “Our ability to connect practitioners to each other on the practical how-to of reform is an agenda of rapidly increasing importance.”

Some of the grants funded under the South-South Exchange Facility have helped:

• Keep boys out of risky behavior – committing crimes and acts of violence, abusing drugs and alcohol and dropping out of school – in Caribbean nations
• Ten African nations learn from China, Singapore and Malaysia about developing special economic zones (SEZs) to boost industry and trade
• Eight African nations to learn from India about developing a skilled workforce capable of competing globally in information technology (IT) and IT services
• Armenia, Azerbaijan and Georgia to lean from the Philippines and China about developing and maintaining high grade expressways

Mukherjee said that South-South learning is a two-way street even for a country like India. He noted how India’s experience in implementing economic reforms and developing the IT sector could help countries tackle similar challenges, but added that India faces challenges of its own. “We have much to learn from the experiences of other countries,” he said. “We would be keen to know how some countries have mainstreamed environmental concerns in their national development plans.”