London: Reserve Bank of India Governor Bimal Jalan has suggested that each country should take measures to build its own safety walls by providing for higher reserves, more realistic policies to regulate capital flows and careful monitoring of exchange rates.

"Let international institutions play a supportive role through higher and more automatic access to finance, subject to annual performance review," Jalan said while addressing the Bank of England symposium for Central Bank Governors.

Jalan said, "These institutions must also be made less ideological and less political with greater voice for all member countries rather than for a handful of industrial countries."

Pleading for greater voting power for developing member countries, he said, "It is one of the ironies of the last 40 years that, although developing countries as a group, have grown much faster than the developed countries and their relative economic strength in terms of output and trade increased substantially."

Jalan was invited by Bank of England Governor Sir Eddie George to be the lead speaker at the high-level Central Bank Governors' symposium on "International Finance Architecture".

He referred to the recent financial crisis and said it underscored the fact that most of the responsibility for coping with the burden of instability and volatility was that of the country itself.

PTI