NEW DELHI: The BRICS bloc of emerging countries has no plans to unite behind a common candidate to head the World Bank, an Indian foreign ministry official said on Monday.

Briefing journalists on the agenda of an upcoming meeting of the leaders of Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa (BRICS), the official said the grouping simply wanted an “open and merit-based” process.

“I have not heard anything so far (about a common candidate),” Sudhir Vyas, the secretary for economic affairs at the foreign ministry, told a media briefing ahead of the BRICS summit on Thursday.

The World Bank announced last Friday that there were three candidates to succeed outgoing president Robert Zoellick in the first challenge to the US monopoly of the top job in history.

Jose Antonio Ocampo, a Colombian university professor, and Nigerian finance minister Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala will challenge Washington’s candidate Jim Yong Kim, currently president of Dartmouth College.

China’s foreign ministry said on Monday that “the voice of developing countries” should be taken into account when selecting a new leader for the World Bank.

The Washington-based lender is expected to select its new president “by consensus” by its 2012 Spring meetings that begin on April 20.

The BRICS meeting in New Delhi is the fourth time the emerging market countries have come together for a summit since the founding of their group in 2006.

Sudhir also cautioned that the countries were far from completing work on setting up a much-discussed BRICS investment bank to fund infrastructure and development.

“It’s still very much a thought that needs to be developed. Experts have met but it will take time,” he said.—AFP