Korea, World Bank agree to widen cooperation

South Korea's finance minister on Wednesday held a meeting with the president of the World Bank Group to discuss ways to expand the country's participation in the organization, the ministry here said.

"It is time to come up with projects to utilize South Korea's experience of economic development and create synergy in the World Bank," Finance Minister Yoo Il-ho said in a meeting with Jim Yong Kim in Seoul.

The South Korea-born president has been in Seoul since Monday, following a Group of 20 meeting held in China last weekend.

Yoo asked the World Bank president to assign more projects led by the bank to the organization's Seoul office which opened in 2014.

The World Bank Seoul office, headquartered in Songdo, on the western outskirts of Seoul, has participated in some infrastructure projects in developing countries including Pakistan and China since its opening.

The two leaders also agreed to increase South Korea's financial contribution to the World Bank's International Development Association, which offers low-interest rate loans to the world's poorest countries.

South Korea had been a beneficiary in the 1960s, but became a donor country in 1978, with a contribution of US$383 million in 2015. (Yonhap)