The World Bank said it would reduce loans to China after Trump called on the financial institution to stop lending to Beijing.

"World Bank loans to China have plummeted and will continue to decline as part of our agreement to all shareholders, including the US," said the World Bank president. (WB) David Malpass said today. Mr. Malpass is a former US Treasury Department official.

"We will stop lending when countries become richer," the WB representative added.

Earlier, the US president called for the financial institution to stop lending money to China. "China has a lot of money and if not, they will make it," Trump said.

US Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin told Dec. 5 members of the House Finance Committee MP that the United States had objected to the World Bank's new five-year framework of lending money to China and developing projects in the country. . According to Mnuchin, lending to China needs to be limited because income in the country is growing.

The World Bank's lending to China has decreased from US $ 2.4 billion in 2017 to US $ 1.3 billion this year. However, Mnuchin said he wanted to see the loan drop further, to less than a billion dollars.

The United States is the largest shareholder of the World Bank, but it has no veto over lending to countries. World Bank activity in China has been heavily scrutinized in recent months after speculating that a $ 50 million loan in 2015 for an educational project was used to fund correctional institutions in Xinjiang. The World Bank in November said it found no evidence, but shrunk the project.

Trump's comments on the World Bank's loans to Beijing come amidst U.S.-China trade talks still deadlocked after efforts to end the 18-month trade war. Observers said it was still uncertain about a partial trade deal between the two sides that Trump said "was about to take place" since October.