G20 can build a better world despite economic difficulties

"I am very optimistic about what is going on in the world," billionaire philanthropist Bill Gates has said on the sidelines of the G20 summit after presenting a report to leaders gathering in the French resort city of Cannes. In an interview with Xinhua on Friday, Gates said he trusted the leaders' cooperation in building up a better world with coordinated efforts despite current economic difficulties.With the G20 decisions to affect the poor countries, the short-term crisis shouldn't blind us from "thinking how we can help out those other countries," Gates said. "It is prettily exciting that the G20 is broad enough to include not only the very rich countries but also countries like China that are now middle-income countries and starts making contribution to help the poorer as well," Gates said. Tasked by France, the host of G20 forum this year, Gates submitted a report on innovative financing to attending leaders in Cannes and had around 90 minutes' discussion with them over external aids to poorer countries. Gates said this report won general support from G20 leaders, along with "a lot of follow-ups" which will be "worked individually with the country on what they are doing in innovation and what they are doing with aid." According to Gates, the rich countries have played major roles on international aid, contributing 85 percent of all aid and they are likely to dominate future international aid sources despite of economic pressure while the rising powers like Brazil, China, India, and Mexico begin to actively joining in. When asked about the reduction of aiding budget from some major players, Gates said: "My presentation in the G20 was to remind them that the aid budget is at most 1.5 percent of their budget and it shouldn't necessary to hurt the poorest as they solve their economic problem." The founder of Microsoft believed that the major powers could cooperate better regardless different opinions on economic issues. "The economic issues are not easy issues but it is very different than having an armed conflict. And there is a common set of values: all of us believe that children should be healthy and well fed so there is no dispute about what we want to achieve." He noted "the importance of innovation" as another consensus among G20 leaders. "Now fortunately we have a more complex situation where we have countries with many levels of income and we should think about different responsibilities." Gates in his report designed "triangular partnerships" for development among rapidly growing countries, traditional donors, and poor countries with different priorities for each of them. "For example China's agriculture has done a fantastic job and (China) continues investing in that. So if helping Africa go from being a huge rice importer to actually being self sufficient in rice, it would help the world food market significantly," Gates said. "There are a lot of innovation in China which can be channeled to help the people in the poorest countries on health and agriculture," he continued, expecting participation of countries at all income level to make the international aid "faster" and "smarter."