WB’s Kim abruptly resigns to join infra firm

MANILA, Philippines — The World Bank Group announced yesterday that its president, Jim Yong Kim, is stepping down from his position next month, more than three years before his current term ends in 2022.

In a statement, the World Bank said that immediately after his departure from the bank, Kim will join a private sector firm focused on increasing infrastructure investments in developing countries but provided no other details. 

World Bank CEO Kristalina Georgieva will then assume the role of interim president effective Feb. 1.

“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,” Kim was quoted in the statement.

“The work of the World Bank Group is more important now than ever as the aspirations of the poor rise all over the world, and problems like climate change, pandemics, famine and refugees continue to grow in both their scale and complexity.  Serving as president and helping position the institution squarely in the middle of all these challenges has been a great privilege,”

The bank said that in addition to working on infrastructure investments in his new private sector job, Kim would be re-joining the board of Partners in Health (PIH), an organization he co-funded more than 30 years ago.

“I look forward to working once again with my longtime friends and colleagues at PIH on a range of issues in global health and education. I will also continue my engagement with Brown University as a trustee of the corporation and look forward to serving as a senior fellow at Brown’s Watson Institute for International and Public Affairs,” said Kim.

During his six-year stint as president, Kim had pushed for the financing of green energy projects and reduced support for coal power projects.

Wire reports said Kim’s position opposes the Trump administration’s climate policies and priority of reviving the US coal sector.

Kim, a physician, was nominated by former president Barrack Obama for two five-year terms beginning in 2012.

Reuters reported that Trump can strongly influence the choice of Kim’s successor as the US has a controlling share of the World Bank’s voting rights.

The bank said that under Kim’s leadership,  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,” the bank said.

The World group’s fund for the world’s poorest, International Development Association, 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 group’s governors  approved a historic $13 billion capital increase for International Bank for Reconstruction and Development and International Finance Corporation that will allow the 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.