Ahead of the G20 meeting in London later this week, the World Bank is calling for governments to support a US$50 billion program to boost global trade.

Speaking Tuesday in London, Robert Zoellick, World Bank Group president, said new data from the World Bank shows that global trade in goods and services would fall 6% this year, the largest decline in 80 years.

Zoellick added there would be a sharp slowdown in economic growth in the developing world this year, putting more poor people at risk, and he argued that the G20 must not shrink from combining ideas and actions to restore confidence in the world economy.

Zoellick said he hoped the G20 would endorse a new $50 billion Global Trade Liquidity Program. The program combines a $1 billion investment from the World Bank with financing from governments and regional development banks. These public funds can be leveraged by a risk-sharing arrangement with major private sector partners, such as Standard Chartered, Standard Bank, and Rabobank. “G20 backing will help us gain more momentum, thereby increasing support,” Zoellick said.

Zoellick said many of the immediate challenges of the crisis could be addressed if the G20 reformed and empowered existing international institutions to help resist protectionism, evaluate the effectiveness of stimulus packages, and monitor banking reforms.

“This is not a moment for complacency. It is not a day for expressing false confidence that all has been done that can be done. It is not a time for narrow nationalist or even regional responses. The one certitude we can draw from events over the past year is our inability to predict what is to come, and how it may trigger other unexpected events,” Zoellick said in his speech ahead of the G20 summit in London.

Zoellick also noted that those who had recognized the scale of today’s crisis were calling for new global governance regimes. But the immediate challenge is to reform, empower, and use existing institutions more effectively, including by giving developing countries more representation, he said.

“If leaders are serious about creating new global responsibilities or governance, let them start by modernizing multilateralism to empower the WTO, the IMF, and the World Bank Group to monitor national policies,” Zoellick said. “Bringing sunlight to national decision-making would contribute to transparency, accountability, and consistency across national policies.”

Zoellick said leaders should learn from previous economic crises in Latin America in the 1980s and Asia in the 1990s and not repeat the mistake of ignoring the plight of the most vulnerable. Developing countries needed to be part of the global solution to the global crisis.

IE