British PM demands larger role for India

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New Delhi, January 21:: British Prime Minister Gordon Brown on Monday asked the World Bank, IMF and the rich nations' G-8 club to revamp their structure to reflect India's rising prowess in the global economy.

"I support changes to the World Bank, the IMF and G-8 that reflect the rise of India and rise of Asia," he said at a breakfast meeting with Indian and British industry leaders in Delhi.

He said: "We can and must do more to make our global institutions more representative," and added that the IMF should work with the same independence given to central banks.

With the financial turbulence spreading out of America, the World Bank and the IMF should prevent such crises rather than resolving them later, he said. "We have to find new ways of dealing with global financial turbulence."

Noting that India was making powerful contribution to the world economy, Brown said: "In the last 15 years you have doubled your national income" and the country has become the fourth largest producer of medicine and second largest developer of software in the world.

"No global company can be truly global unless it has operations based in India," the British prime minister told the gathering that included Swraj Paul of UK-based Caparo Group, Vodafone CEO Arun Sarin, Bharti Group head Sunil Bharti Mittal and Virgin Group Chairman Richard Branson.

Commerce and Industry Minister Kamal Nath said India and China with 40 per cent consumers of the world market would insulate the global economy from slowdown in the west. "Gloom of the west is going to be the boom of the east," he said.