- Tuesday, January 14, 2025
By: Shubham Ghosh
US treasury secretary Janet Yellen on Wednesday (29) said she expected Ajay Banga, Washington’s nominee to head the World Bank, will be elected to the top post.
In a testimony prepared for the State, Foreign Operations and Related Programs sub-committee of the House Appropriations Committee in the US House of Representatives, Yellen said Bangla would be charged with helping the multilateral development bank to address new challenges better, Reuters reported.
“This evolution will help the Bank deliver on its vital poverty alleviation and development goals,” Yellen was set to tell lawmakers who control the treasury department’s purse strings, the report added.
The 63-year-old Banga, who was born in the Indian city of Pune, earlier headed Mastercard. He recently concluded a three-week world tour to meet government leaders, civil society bodies and others in both borrowing and donor nations as he campaigned for his election.
He was also supposed to meet Indian prime minister Narendra Modi, finance minister Nirmala Sitharaman and external affairs minister Subrahmanyam Jaishankar in India but the schedule was disrupted as Banga tested Covid positive.
US president Joe Biden nominated the finance and development executive, who is an American citizen, for the post last month.
Banga has secured enough countries’ support to virtually assure his confirmation as the chief of the World Bank, including India, Britain, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, Bangladesh, Colombia, Egypt, Ivory Coast, Kenya, Saudi Arabia and South Korea.
The World Bank was set to accept nominations from other countries until Wednesday, but no competitors were announced. The World Bank has been led by an American since its founding at the end of the Second World War.
The bank’s board has said that it hoped to elect a new leader by early May.
Banga, if elected, will succeed David Malpass, who was nominated by former US president Donald Trump. He stepped down in February after months of controversy over his initial failure to acknowledge that he backed scientific consensus on climate change.
