BRASIL­IA-Brazil wants emerg­ing eco­nom­ic pow­ers to ral­ly around a sin­gle can­di­date to lead the World Bank as de­vel­op­ing na­tions strive to bol­ster their in­flu­ence at the glob­al lender, Fi­nance Min­is­ter Gui­do Man­te­ga said on Thurs­day. Man­te­ga met ear­li­er on Thurs­day with the Unit­ed States nom­i­nee for the top post, Jim Yong Kim, whom Man­te­ga said showed vast ex­pe­ri­ence in the de­vel­op­ing world. He re­it­er­at­ed, how­ev­er, that Brazil has not yet made up its mind.

Be­sides Brazil, the BRICS group in­cludes Chi­na, Rus­sia, In­dia and South Africa. The group has called for "a mer­it based process" to pick the next head of the World Bank. A US cit­i­zen has head­ed the World Bank since it was cre­at­ed af­ter World War II.

But de­vel­op­ing na­tions are chal­leng­ing that tra­di­tion and are seek­ing more in­flu­ence in glob­al in­sti­tu­tions that re­flect their grow­ing eco­nom­ic strength. De­vel­op­ing na­tions have nom­i­nat­ed Niger­ian Fi­nance Min­is­ter Ngozi Okon­jo-Iweala and for­mer Colom­bian Fi­nance Min­is­ter Jose An­to­nio Ocam­po for the top job.

Brazil de­clined to im­me­di­ate­ly throw its sup­port be­hind the Niger­ian can­di­date dur­ing last week's BRICS sum­mit, rais­ing the prospect that Latin Amer­i­ca's top econ­o­my may try to ex­tract emerg­ing-mar­ket friend­ly con­ces­sions from the US can­di­date in re­turn for sup­port.

In 2011, Brazil failed to con­vince oth­er BRICS to joint­ly back a can­di­date to head the In­ter­na­tion­al Mon­e­tary Fund. Brazil­ians end­ed up back­ing cur­rent IMF chief Chris­tine La­garde in ex­change for the con­tin­u­a­tion of re­forms to in­crease the voice of emerg­ing-mar­ket coun­tries in the in­sti­tu­tion.

Emerg­ing-mar­ket na­tions face an up­hill bat­tle to un­seat the Unit­ed States with­out the uni­fied sup­port to a sin­gle can­di­date, a se­nior Brazil­ian of­fi­cial in­volved in the talks told Reuters. South Africa is back­ing Okon­jo-Iweala for the post. The oth­er BRICS are still un­de­cid­ed, the Brazil­ian of­fi­cial said.

Ex­cel­lent cre­den­tials

Man­te­ga said Kim has an ex­cel­lent re­sume and wants to con­tin­ue with changes at the World Bank that in­crease the rep­re­sen­ta­tion of emerg­ing-mar­ket na­tions. Oth­er Brazil­ian of­fi­cials said Man­te­ga was im­pressed with the cre­den­tials of Kim, an ar­tic­u­late physi­cian who was large­ly un­known to Brazil­ian pol­i­cy­mak­ers be­fore his nom­i­na­tion in March.

Kim, pres­i­dent of Dart­mouth Col­lege, is on a world tour to seek sup­port for his can­di­da­cy.