Mr Wolfensohn will be wrapping up his second visit to India with a meeting with prime minister Atal Behari Vajpayee, finance minister Yashwant Sinha, power minister Suresh Prabhu and a host of senior government functionaries in the Capital on Monday and Tuesday.

The real issue before the country's leadership is to impress upon the WB the need for enhancing its CAS to India from $ 3 billion per annum to $ 4 billion for the three-year period beginning 2001. Mr Sinha, who was in Prague in September to attend the week-long annual meeting of the World Bank/International Monetary Fund, pleaded for an increase in WB's lending commitment to India. The issue of increasing CAS will again come up for discussion when the two leaders meet in the capital.

The other important issue which will be taken up with the WB president relate to assistance for the power sector projects. Mr Prabhu will seek assistance to the tune of $ 1.3 billion for various generation and transmission projects. In the central sector National Thermal Power Corporation (NTPC) will seek $ 400 million, Power Grid Corporation will ask for $ 800 million and National Hydro-electric Power Corporation (NHPC) will seek $ 100 million.

The WB, which is the single largest donor to India, has not halted lending programme to India in the aftermath of sanctions. It has continued to sanction projects which were not strictly humanitarian. Since April 2000, the WB has approved 12 projects involving a total assistance of more than $ 2 billion. These include Andhra Pradesh poverty removal scheme, Uttar Pradesh fiscal reforms, UP power sector reforms, technical assistance for economic reforms, Rajasthan district poverty initiatives, UP health development project, immunisation strengthening project, technical assistance for telecom sector, national highway development project, IREDA-II, Gujarat state highway project and technical education-III scheme.

Instead of coming to Delhi and meeting the top leaders and then going to states, Mr Wolfensohn adopted the unorthodox way of visiting the states and assessing the progress of ongoing WB projects personally before meeting central leadership. This exercise has some major advantages. Firstly, the WB president will be able to assess the fund requirement for India in critical sectors like power, road, ports, etc. It will be advantageous for the country since the exercise will indirectly strengthen India's claim for a higher CAS.

Secondly and more importantly, the president will also come across lacunae and bottlenecks hampering progress of aided projects. These bottlenecks are both financial and procedural and often delay utilisation of funds for which the country pays commitment charges. Having met the officials involved with the projects, the president will make his assessment and take up the relevant issues concerning delay in implementation of the projects with central leadership. A word from the WB president should spur the leadership into action to take full advantage of the lending programme of the multilateral agency.

Thirdly, the states are important as they are responsible for implementing the projects. WB president's visit will prompt them into action and put in extra efforts to meet the target dates for projects. Mr Wolfensohn, after his arrival in Mumbai and meeting Maharashtra chief minister Vilasrao Deshmukh, went to Gujarat, Karnataka, Andhra Pradesh and Uttar Pradesh. He met the chief ministers of the respective states and reviewed progress of the aided projects.

His visit to states was in tandem with the policy of WB, which has reoriented its strategy focussing on states. In 1998, WB supported innovative efforts in Andhra Pradesh to restructure public expenditures through fiscal reforms, social spending targets, and public enterprise divestiture. Then in 2000, Uttar Pradesh became the second state to receive state-level bank assistance. The bank is providing a multi-sectoral package to Uttar Pradesh that supports the economic reforms programme and helps the state put its finances on a sustainable path.

The Indian visit of the WB president will end on November 14. It is likely that the Indian leadership will be able to impress upon Mr Wolfensohn the need for increasing the country assistance strategy to $ 4 billion per annum. However, the core problem of not properly utilising the funds advanced by WB group would continue. In addition to seeking more funds from the bank, it is time that both union and state governments focus seriously on utilising the aid and putting the extra efforts necessary for timely completion of the ongoing projects.