Video chat with David Dollar (7)
Updated: 2008-02-25 09:39
CD: So compare what you are conceiving, the plan that you are conceiving to do in the near future, with the time that the World Bank just came to China. That was the basically in Beijing working with a few central government agencies...
DD: Right, and also when we first opened the office in Beijing there were very very few staff. So almost all the technical experts were back in Washington. So if you go back 20 years, you would say the model was we would agree with China that we would help on a port, for example. And we would send a team of experts from Washington who might spend three weeks working with the central ministry, and the local government would have some sort of role in designing and planning a project. But it was a little bit 'at a distance'. So I think putting a big staff in Beijing in the last ten years - that's the first step. Now we're trying to get more integrated with some of the local governments, and in the best cases I feel that my staff is working almost on a day to day basis with the local government, helping solve a range of problems that come up.
CD: There's already quite a change.
DD: It's a big change, and it's a much better way for the World Bank to operate. It used to be that probably 80 percent of the staff were in Washington, and we were supposed to be helping the developing world, but 80 percent of the staff are sitting in Washington. Now we've got to the point where I think we're getting close to about 50 percent of the staff are in the field, which is a big improvement, but still we've got a lot of staff sitting in a big building in Washington and I have to wonder if that's the best way to help the developing world.