Outgoing World Bank Chief Relishes Past Challenges in Thailand.

Jul. 28--Jayasankar Shivakumar looks wistfully out his ceiling-high window from high up over Wireless Road. It's a beautiful view of the Bangkok skyline, albeit one scattered with reminders of the pitfalls of urbanisation and economic collapse.

But the chief of the World Bank isn't looking at the traffic-clogged streets, the silent construction cranes or the dozens of rusting steel-and-concrete building skeletons, a testimony to the hubris of boom years long gone.

"Do you know, it's the best kept secret in the diplomatic corps, how great a posting Bangkok is," Mr Shivakumar says with a grin. "I've been tremendously lucky to have been here, over these monumental four years."

On Wednesday, Mr Shivakumar retires from service with the World Bank. He will be succeeded as country director by Ian Porter, who will also continue his present duties in overseeing programmes in Cambodia, Laos, Malaysia and Mongolia.

"You know, I arrived here on July 1. And the very next day came the devaluation," Mr Shivakumar recalls.

"Actually, I received the word that I was to be posted to Thailand just several days before. Everyone told me that Thailand wasn't a country where there was much to do, how it was difficult to get things going."

Quite the opposite. With the devaluation of the baht in mid-1997, Thailand became the focal point for an economic crisis which first swept the region, then emerging markets worldwide.