WASHINGTON -- The World Bank will give Haiti an extra US$20 million in aid this year and is working to speed up the impoverished nation's debt cancellation, bank president Robert Zoellick said Tuesday.

"I am pleased to announce that the World Bank plans to provide a further 20 million dollars of additional grant assistance to Haiti, above what had already been programmed," Zoellick said at an international donors conference for Haiti in Washington.

"This additional allocation will raise to US$80 million the new funding that the World Bank Group expects to approve for Haiti for the next two years," he added.

Earlier at the conference the US secretary of state, Hillary Clinton, announced a total of US$57 million in aid for the Caribbean country, the poorest in the Western Hemisphere.

The international donors conference organized by the Inter-American Development Bank (IBD) and the Haitian government in the US capital drew about 20 countries and multilateral institutions, including the 185-nation World Bank and International Monetary Fund (IMF).

Zoellick said that the development lender was working closely with the Haitian authorities and the IMF "to help expedite debt cancellation while ensuring that monies released go directly to support poverty reduction."

He said the bank would send documentation next month to its executive board so that Haiti can reach the completion point to qualify for debt cancellation under the enhanced Heavily Indebted Poor Countries (HIPC) Initiative.

IMF managing director Dominique Strauss-Kahn noted that Haiti was "on track to receive almost one billion US dollars in debt relief from the IMF and other multilateral and official creditors by the end of June 2009."

That would lead to annual debt service savings of between US$35 and US$40 million that would free up resources for spending on poverty reduction and growth stimulus, he said.

"We therefore strongly support the (Haitian) authorities' request for an additional US$125 million in budget support for this year," Strauss-Kahn said.

In view of the devastating hurricanes and soaring food and energy prices that afflicted Haiti last year, the IMF chief urged countries to boost their contributions.