Sri Mulyani Indrawati Quotes

We know we cannot achieve our twin goals of ending poverty and boosting shared prosperity without ending poverty and creating equality for women and girls.

We now know that climate action does not require economic sacrifice. This is fully in line with the World Bank Group's findings. It is up to all of us to make smart policy choices that will help combat climate change. For example, putting a price on carbon is a necessary step and could drive resources and investments to a cleaner economy.

I always enjoy the job and the work that I do, because that's the condition that I attach in accepting any job. This way, I can really work and dedicate myself to the institution for achieving the goal which I believe is a noble one.

Reliable numbers about the amount of dirty money around the world are difficult to come by. But according to an estimate by the nonprofit Global Financial Integrity group, $1 trillion vanishes from the developing world's economies every year.

Revolutions and their aftermaths, of course, are always fluid and fickle times, and the outcome is often perched on a knife's edge.

Over time, Europeans have come to rely on governments to protect them from the rougher facets of private enterprise and to look after them in old age.

If women had equal access to fertilizer and modern farm machinery, developing countries would produce between 2.5-percent and 4-percent more food.

Paternalistic regulations often prohibit women from holding jobs in certain industries: In the Russian Federation, women cannot drive trucks in the agriculture sector; in Belarus, they cannot be carpenters; in Kazakhstan, they cannot be welders.

China's urbanization supported the country's impressive growth and rapid economic transformation.

When both women and men contribute to a country's economic life on an equal basis, they help building stronger societies and stronger economies.

Financial inclusion helps lift people out of poverty and can help speed economic development. It can draw more women into the mainstream of economic activity, harnessing their contributions to society.

Do what is best for most people, not just a few. Prevent your elites and growing middle class, those who often benefit most from growth and development, from turning into a special interests group that blocks reforms.

Urbanization has relied on land conversion and land financing, which is causing urban sprawl and, on occasion, ghost towns and waste.

New leaders must also expect and manage setbacks. In post-revolutionary times, expectations are high, and the obstacles to meeting them are enormous.

The problem of the food price is structural. The growth of demand cannot be checked in that it is coming from middle income countries demanding more quality and more quantity of food. High demand is here to stay.

Although many people in Aceh are still poor and vulnerable, the province resembles nothing like the place I saw the day after the tsunami hit.

I remember my first meeting with my management team when I became Indonesia's Minister of Finance. I was the youngest person and the first woman ever to hold that job. Everybody else in the room was male. I knew then that I had to work harder than any man to prove to them that I was capable.

So much research has been done showing that the woman is the most vulnerable but also the biggest strength leading to economic progress.

At the World Bank, we are already working with our clients in developing countries to improve their governance systems, collect taxes, fight corruption, and recover stolen assets.

Everyone with all those good intentions came to help Indonesia rebuild from the tsunami; but the co-ordination problem was very big, because they came with their own way of doing business; they came with the inflexibility of their own governance.

If managed well, urbanization can create enormous opportunities: allowing innovation and new ideas to emerge, saving energy, land and natural resources, managing climate and the risk of disasters.

When millions of dollars and thousands of humanitarian workers poured into Indonesia, we quickly faced the challenge of coordinating our own bureaucracy with the multitudes of approaches and priorities the donor community wanted to pursue.

I am still an Indonesian citizen.

In the 1990s, I was among those Indonesians who demanded and celebrated the departure of our own autocrat, Suharto, and I joined the new government when he left.

Development is an endurance exercise with incremental improvements.

Asia can learn much from Europe. Trade could be made easier in Asia, and the conditions for doing business could be improved by reducing red tape. In this regard, Hong Kong, Singapore and South Korea have done better than the best in Europe.

Conflicting legislation and regulations, overlapping mandates, unwillingness to enforce land use, elite capture, entrenched attitudes, and lack of incentives to influence behavior are rife in many resource-rich countries.

Infrastructure alone won't end poverty. The World Bank had to learn this lesson, too. While we believed too much in bricks and mortar in our early days, we now understand that bringing together funding, technical expertise, and tested knowledge goes much further.

People now, especially with the Internet, are connected. They have an expectation of behaviour, of accountability, avoiding conflict and fair and just competition.

In Indonesia, where I am from, the Dutch-imposed Civil Code dating back to the colonial 1870s prevailed until the 1974 Law on Marriage granted married women greater rights, including the ability to open individual bank accounts.

Accounting for the unpaid care economy can drive progressive policies such as paid family leave, social security credits for early childcare, tax credits, and quality early childhood education.

Sometimes our definitions fall short. Take, for example, the way we view income and labor. It simply doesn't cover enough of the work that women, and in particular poor women, are doing - especially in their own households and the vast 'informal' economy in which most of the world's poorest people work.

Like many countries, Indonesia can transform its decision-making system to be more transparent and inclusive, particularly on resource allocation and use.

There's broad recognition that you really have to put the money where people are going to self-manage.

Being able to save, make non-cash payments, send or receive remittances, get credit, or get insurance can be instrumental in raising living standards and helping businesses prosper. It helps people to invest more in education or health care.

If Indonesia improves governance of the fisheries sector and invests in large-scale maritime transport, it can double fish production by 2019.

While prosperity and longevity arrive together, they cannot be treated the same. With greater wealth, people in Asia may not have to work as many hours as they do now. But living longer means they will have to work more years, not fewer.

Many emerging countries are facing the same issue of overheating and inflation because they have been vigorously expanding fiscal and monetary policy to counter the 2008 shock.

Women are emerging as a major force for change. Countries that have invested in girls' education and removed legal barriers that prevent women from achieving their potential are now seeing the benefits.

In many countries, laws still work to women's disadvantage - for example, by requiring married women to obtain their husbands' permission to register a business, own property, or work.

If women had better access to the financial system - even so much as a basic deposit account at a bank - it would be a major step in the direction of greater wealth and greater economic empowerment.

We won't be able to stop disasters from happening. On the contrary, climate change may increase the frequency and severity of floods, droughts and storms. But we are better equipped today to prepare for them and reduce their impact.

In middle-income countries, inequality becomes a problem because you can see there is a layer of people who are doing well, while the poor are still stuck there. We have 300 million poor in India.

It is rarely the quick fix that goes the farthest. So don't get tempted by political cycles and the lure of electoral wins.