The new president of the World Bank (WB)the Indian-American Ajay Banga, asked this Friday to speed up the approval and delivery of credits and financing for projects in order to give a higher priority to global challenges such as climate change.
On his first day as the head of the WB, Banga seeks to eliminate red tape and speed up loan approvals that can have a delay of two to three years.
The former CEO of Mastercard presented an internal letter disseminated to the Governing Council and then to the rest of the employees where he points out that “the bank itself needs to evolve.”
The Indian was made official in May by the directors of the World Bank (WB), within the framework of a selection process initiated after the resignation of the former head, David Malpasslast February.
Even the president of the United States, Joe Bidenhad words of praise for Banga before knowing his official assumption to the financial institution: “Ajay is equipped with what is necessary to lead the World Bank at this critical moment in its history.”
Banga, the US candidate for the World Bank
In this context, The United States gained advantages in the World Bank (WB), since the former CEO of Mastercard was cataloged as the candidate of the North American country.
And the decision was not by chance: since the creation of the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and the WB in the Bretton Woods agreement in 1944, the American candidate usually becomes president of the WBwhile a European is chosen to head the IMF.
Banga, for his part, had a business career in companies such as Nestle and PepsiCo to finally move to the financial sector, where he went through Citigroup and was CEO of MasterCard between 2010 and the end of 2021.
Already as a benchmark for Mastercard, he promoted financial inclusion, and stressed the need to finance climate-friendly projects in developing countries with high debt loads, one of the main questions of these countries when joining the climate goals.
Source: Ambito
