Washington/New Delhi, April 26 (PTI): India has become the seventh largest shareholder in the World Bank after member nations approved a shift in voting rights as a reflection of its growing economic clout. However, China’s clout has increased more, and the country is now the third-largest shareholder.

At the spring meeting of the World Bank-IMF in Washington, the member countries yesterday agreed to increase India’s voting power from 2.77 per cent to 2.91 per cent.

“These changes reflect the rapid growth of the Indian economy in the past decade and its rising economic weight in global affairs,” a finance ministry statement said.

The country will also be able to access an additional $7 billion to $10 billion in the coming years from the World Bank as member nations decided to increase the total capital base that would allow the agency to lend an additional $86 billion.

“This extra capital can be deployed to create jobs and protect the most vulnerable through investments in infrastructure, small- and medium-sized enterprises, and safety nets,” World Bank president Robert B. Zoellick said.

The World Bank and the International Monetary Fund (IMF) concluded their annual spring meeting with an overall shift of 3 per cent vote share to developing countries bringing their total vote share to 47 per cent.

While the voting power of countries such as India, China, Brazil, Indonesia, Mexico and Turkey has increased, that of some of the major European and other countries that have traditionally dominated international finance such as the UK, France, Germany, Japan, Australia and Canada has gone down.

“We, in calculating this, looked at the size of the world economy, using purchasing power” and “also the exchange rate measures”, the World Bank said.

The US, the largest shareholder in the multilateral funding agency, at present holds 15.85 per cent, followed by Japan (6.84 per cent), China (4.42 per cent), Germany (4 per cent), France (3.75 per cent), the United Kingdom (3.75 per cent) and India (2.91 per cent).