South Africa will push for the revamp of the World Bank and International Monetary Fund when it takes the helm of the G20 bloc next year, Finance Minister Trevor Manuel said.

Manuel, who will lead the Group of 20 finance chiefs next year when South Africa assumes its rotating chairmanship, said he hoped to effect reforms in the World Bank and IMF "to make them a lot more relevant than they are."

"We hope to take the discussion forward, deepen it and lay a basis for new resolutions .. (for) the reform of the World Bank and IMF," Manuel told reporters in Pretoria.

South Africa, the largest economy in Africa, has been pressing for sweeping reforms in the United Nations and multi-lateral lending institutions, saying the voice and interests of the developing world are being ignored.

Manuel said there was a large reform agenda and suggested that facilities such as a contingency credit line (CCL) to poor countries could be on the horizon.

"There was talk of the CCL and this would be a kind of insurance policy for countries that were well managed but found themselves in hard times. For some reason the IMF couldn't deliver the product so it is still outstanding," said Manuel.

Using the example of South Africa, he said if a well-managed country ran into trouble it needed to know that it could receive financial assistance without too many conditions attached.

"There are a number of variables you don't have control over and if those kick out you need to know there is something on the other side."

The IMF lends to countries in financial difficulty but makes the loans contingent on strict and often unpopular economic reforms to reduce public spending.

"There still is a case to be made for the World Bank and IMF to continue to exist ... There are the bulk of poor countries who have no access to facilities other than from these multilateral institutions," he said.

Manuel, addressing reporters after attending a G20 meeting in Melbourne in Australia, said the economic damage done by natural disasters also sparked an inpromptu discussion on the possibility of an IMF insurance fund for governments.

"Hurricanes, tsunamis, earthquakes, these issues are arising with a frequency not anticipated. Governments have to make good. They lose infrastructure, buildings and people are too poor to re-establish (themselves)."

He said one of the issues South Africa would focus on when it chairs the G20 was the relationship between commodity prices and financial stability.

"We have taken the view that as a commodity producer of note, we have seen in the past that commodity price cycles have an impact on the exchange rate, which impacts the impact on interest rate which will have an impact on economic stability," Manuel said.

Another item on the agenda would be "fiscal space" or how governments use their money and measures and policies they undertake to alleviate poverty and speed up development.

Seminars on each of the topics of financial stability, fiscal space and the reform of the monetary institutions will be held around the world next year, leading up to the G20 meeting in Cape Town in November.

The G20 includes the wealthy G7 nations -- the United States, Germany, Japan, France, Italy, Britain and Canada -- as well as the European Union, Argentina, Australia, Brazil, China, India, Indonesia, Mexico, Russia, Saudi Arabia, South Africa,South Korea and Turkey.