By David Lawder
BENGALURU (Reuters) – The United States intends to “quickly” nominate a candidate for the World Bank presidency who is committed to the lender’s poverty reduction mission as well as lending reforms to fight climate change and other global challenges, U.S. Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen said on Thursday.
At a news conference ahead of a G20 finance leaders meeting on the outskirts of Bengaluru, Yellen declined to name the U.S. nominee or say whether the candidate would be a woman.
The World Bank’s executive board plans to open nominations for the development lender’s top job later on Thursday, and said it “would strongly encourage women candidates to be nominated.”
The board expects to choose a new candidate by early May, replacing current president David Malpass, who said he will step down by early June, well before his term ends in April 2024.
The U.S. Treasury manages the dominant U.S. shareholding in the World Bank, giving Yellen strong influence over who leads the institution. Since the World Bank’s founding at the end of World War Two, the United States has traditionally chosen the bank’s leader, while Europe has chosen the head of the International Monetary Fund.
Yellen said the U.S. candidate will have the qualifications needed to lead the world’s largest development lender and be committed to lending reforms to fight climate change, pandemics and other global challenges while preserving the bank’s longstanding work to reduce poverty.
“We intend to quickly put forward a well-qualified candidate. And I don’t have any updates for you on who that might be, stay tuned,” Yellen said.
(Reporting by David Lawder and Aftab Ahmed; Writing by David Lawder and Sudipto Ganguly in Mumbai; editing by Miral Fahmy and Simon Cameron-Moore)
