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08 January
2019
 |
World Bank (The Total Investment & Insurance Solutions)
World
Bank President Jim Yong Kim has announced that he is stepping down as the head
of the premier anti-poverty institution putting the likely choice of its future
leadership in the hands of US President Donald Trump, a sceptic of
international development.
Trump's
role is expected reinvigorate challenges to Washington's monopoly on appointing
the Bank's head.
Announcing
his decision on Monday, Kim said in a tweet: "It's been the greatest
privilege I could have ever imagined to lead the dedicated staff of this great
institution to bring us closer to a world that is finally free of
poverty."
Kim,
59, who is dropping out 19 months into his second term on February 1, would be
joining a private company and focus on infrastructure investments in developing
countries, the Bank said.
The
Bank's CEO Kristalina Georgieva will become the interim president till a
successor to Kim is appointed.
As
the largest share-holder, the US by tradition appoints the head of the Bank,
while Europeans determine the chief of the International Monetary Fund.
Kim
was nominated for the job by former President Barack Obama in 2012.
Before
Trump's election, Kim was hastily re-appointed in September 2016 to a second
term that began in July 2017 with an eye on pre-empting a possible Trump
nominee getting the job.
Now,
however, Trump will get an opportunity to nominate the Bank's head.
Trump's
role will resurrect and strengthen challenges to the post-World War II model of
the leadership of the 189-member bank that has always been determined by the US
.
Already
the US nominee was challenged for the first time in 2012 by two contenders.
Colombian
economist Jose Antonio Ocampo Gaviria eventually withdrew from the race, while
Nigeria's then-Finance Minister Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala lost when the Bank's
directors rubber-stamped Kim's appointment.
Now
there will be robust demands for reconsidering the US leadership of the Bank
and stronger non-American contenders for the job.
Kim,
a South Korea-born US citizen, was an unusual leader for the Bank: He was a
medical doctor by training, a specialist in public health and an academic with
a Harvard doctorate in anthropology who had led the Ivy League Dartmouth
College.
But
his background in health was a plus for the Bank's mission of fighting poverty
and promoting development.
Under
his leadership, the Bank adopted in tandem with the UN the goal of ending
extreme poverty by 2030 and focusing on the bottom 40 per cent of the
population in the developing world.
The
Bank's International Development Association, which funds programmes in the
least developed countries, achieved two record replenishments during his
tenure, the last one in 2016 for $75 billion.
Last
April, the Bank also increased its capital by $13 billion with the unexpected
support of the Trump administration.
Kim
also pushed the Bank's cooperation with the private sector for financing
development in the developing world, particularly in the areas of climate
change and infrastructure.
China,
though a part of the World Bank, has thrown a challenge to it by setting up its
own development banking institutions.
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