World Bank’s New Chief Asks Staff to ‘double Down’ On Development, Climate Efforts
Afghan Voice Agency (AVA)_Monitoring, On his first day in the job, the former Mastercard CEO told staff in a memo seen by Reuters that he would seek to recruit each of them to work towards his vision “to create a world free from poverty on a livable planet.”
“Making good on our ambition will require us to evolve to maximize resources and write a new playbook, to think creatively, take informed risks and forge new partnerships with civil society and multilateral institutions,” Banga wrote.
He also said the bank needed to become more efficient, slashing the approval time for financing projects, which can now take up to three years.
Banga on Thursday met with US Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen, who urged him to “get the most out of the bank’s balance sheet” and mobilize more private capital, Reuters reported.
Yellen last year began pressing the World Bank and other multilateral lenders to revamp their business models and dramatically scale up lending resources to address climate change, pandemics, food security and other global crises.
This would move the development lenders beyond the country-specific project loans they have pursued for decades, though she has demanded they maintain their core mission to reduce poverty.
Banga, 63, was elected to a five-year term as World Bank president by the lender’s board of governors in May.
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