Effective from February 1, 2019, the World Bank Group will see its current CEO, Kristalina Georgieva assume the role of interim President.
This follows announcement made by the Bank’s Group President, Jim Yong Kim that he will be stepping down from his position after more than six years in which the institution’s shareholders provided strong support to multiple initiatives to ensure that the Bank Group retains strong leadership in the world of global development.
“It has been a great honor to serve as President of this remarkable institution, full of passionate individuals dedicated to the mission of ending extreme poverty in our lifetime,” said Kim.
Serving as President and helping position the institution squarely in the middle of all these challenges has been a great privilege.”
Under Kim’s leadership, and with the backing of the Bank Group’s 189 member countries, the institution in 2012 established two goals: to end extreme poverty by 2030; and to boost shared prosperity, focusing on the bottom 40 percent of the population in developing countries. These goals now guide and inform the institution in its daily work around the globe.
In addition, shareholders strongly supported measures to ensure that the Bank Group be even better positioned to respond to the development needs of clients:
- The Bank Group’s Fund for the Poorest, IDA, achieved two successive, record replenishments, which enabled the institution to increase its work in areas suffering from fragility, conflict, and violence.
- In April 2018, the Bank Group’s Governors overwhelmingly approved a historic US$13 billion capital increase for IBRD and IFC that will allow the Bank Group to support countries in reaching their development goals while responding to crises such as climate change, pandemics, fragility, and underinvestment in human capital around the world.
Over the past 6 years, the institutions of the World Bank Group have provided financing at levels never seen outside of a financial crisis.
Recognizing the power of capital markets to transform development finance, the Bank Group during Kim’s tenure also launched several new innovative financial instruments, including facilities to address infrastructure needs, prevent pandemics, and help the millions of people forcibly displaced from their homes by climate shocks, conflict, and violence.
During his term, President Kim emphasized that one of the greatest needs in the developing world is infrastructure finance, and he pushed the Bank Group to maximize finance for development by working with a new cadre of private sector partners committed to building sustainable, climate-smart infrastructure in developing countries.
To that end, Kim has announced that, immediately after his departure, he will join a firm and focus on increasing infrastructure investments in developing countries. The details of this new position will be announced shortly.
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