World Bank President Robert Zoellick said yesterday that China is in a good position to have a strong fiscal expansion, a way to offset the effects of the international financial crisis.

"China is in a very good position to have a strong fiscal expansion. The Chinese authorities spoke of that aspect," he told a press conference in Sao Paulo, where he participates in a G20 meeting.

Officials from the finance ministries and central banks of the world's key developed and emerging countries began a two-day meeting yesterday to look at ways to tackle the global economic crisis.

Zoellick compared China's situation in comparison with other developing countries which cannot expand their expenditures so much.

Zoellick considered "very wise" China's decision to make large improvements in its infrastructure in the last few years, adding that it could be taken as a model by other countries.

China benefited from the high liquidity in the global market in the last years, which proves that the injection of resources that is taking place in the financial markets can be, to many countries, an opportunity that comes from the crisis, he said.

The World Bank president stressed that the G20 debates changed their focus in the last months from the need for homogeneous fiscal policies to implementation of expansion policies in order to fight the threat of a global recession.