Annual Meeting - Board of Governors of the World Bank Group
remarks of
Robert B. Zoellick
President, World Bank Group
Washington, D.C.
"Catalyzing the Future: An Inclusive & Sustainable Globalization"
Mr. Chairman, Governors, and Distinguished Guests:
I am pleased to welcome you to our Annual Meetings.
I would like to express my special appreciation to our Chairman, Karim Djoudi, for these meetings and to Augustín Carstens, for his leadership of the Development Committee, as well as for his fine counsel as I assumed this new post.
I would also like to thank my friend and colleague Rodrigo de Rato for fostering a strong partnership between our two institutions. I have known Rodrigo from the time we worked together in our respective governments on trade and economic issues, and I have always deeply appreciated his insight, decency, and dry wit. I wish him the very best for the future.
I look forward to continuing this partnership with Dominique Strauss-Kahn. We first met through my good friend, Pascal Lamy, now Director General of the WTO. It seems to be my lot to be paired with extraordinarily capable French Socialists!
I would also like to thank the many people who have offered me encouragement and support. I sense that people around the world recognize both the need for and potential of this unique creation. The World Bank Group is one of the great multilateral institutions established after World War II. Sixty years later, it must adapt to vastly different circumstances in a new era of globalization. I think its best years are those still to come.
See full Speech.
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