WASHINGTON, Sept 24: The World Bank president said on Thursday that he believed poverty could be defeated by strong leadership in developing countries, supported by much closer teamwork by the donor countries, development agencies and civil society organizations that offer them desperately needed resources and expertise.

World Bank President Paul Wolfowitz lauded Pakistan’s efforts to reduce poverty and educate women as he stressed that developing countries could fight poverty by combining their efforts with those of donor agencies.

In his first address to the annual meetings of the World Bank and International Monetary Fund since becoming the bank’s president on June 1, Mr Wolfowitz mentioned Pakistan five times in his speech, praising what he saw during his recent visit to the country.

“A few weeks ago, I met a Pakistani woman from the village of Dhok Tabarak who was participating in a rural development project sponsored by the Pakistan Poverty Alleviation Fund with help from the bank,” he said.

“I asked whether the success of her project could be reproduced elsewhere in Pakistan. With passionate conviction she said, ‘Why not? The Japanese have done it. The Chinese have done it. Why can’t Pakistan do it?”

Mr Wolfowitz also recalled his meeting with another poor woman in Pakistan who told him, “Development is like a cart with two wheels — one man and one woman. If one of the wheels isn’t moving, the cart won’t go far.”

He said one of the encouraging signs he saw on his trip to South Asia was the premium Pakistan and India were placing on girls’ education.

Mr Wolfowitz said through the Education for All Fast Track Initiative, the bank has planned to join other donors to double the enrolment of girls in 60 countries over the next five years. “We will need to raise at least $2.5 billion per year to fulfil the dreams of thousands of school children eager for a brighter future,” he said.

Mr Wolfowitz said that 40 years ago as a management intern at the US Bureau of the Budget, he wrote a paper trying to demonstrate why the US should provide subsidized fertilizer to Pakistan’s farmers rather than dumping wheat and destroying the local markets.

“Forty years later, it seems we are still doing something similar in Africa-supporting emergency famine relief instead of improving agricultural production to prevent famine,” he added.