The President of the World Bank (WB), Jim Yong Kim, today submitted his resignation to the position, which will leave the leadership of the multilateral financial organization three and a half years before concluding his second term in July 2022.
The World Bank said in a statement that the resignation of Kim, who has held the presidency of the institution based in Washington for more than six years, will be effective from next February 1.
“It has been a great honor to serve as president of this remarkable institution, full of passionate people dedicated to the mission of ending extreme poverty in our lives,” Kim said in the announcement of his resignation, according to the institution.
In its note, the BM announced that the Bulgarian Kristalina Georgieva, the current CEO of the organization, will become the interim president of the institution when Kim’s departure materializes.
In September 2016, Kim, a 59-year-old American doctor and anthropologist, an expert in global health issues, had been re-elected without any other candidate threatening his aspirations to continue to head the institution.
Kim had started that second five-year term as head of the World Bank on July 1, 2017.
Of North Korean origin, Kim was elected for the first time as president of the World Bank in 2012, after the then US president, Barack Obama (2009-2017), presented his candidacy.
In the elections, Kim won over the other candidate, Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala, former finance minister of Nigeria, while a third candidate, former Colombian Minister José Antonio Ocampo, withdrew his candidacy before registering the vote.
In this way, tradition and the tacit pact maintained between the USA were followed. and Europe since these organizations were founded in 1944, so that the BM’s leadership falls to an American and that of the International Monetary Fund (IMF) in a European.
The agency noted that under Kim’s mandate, the governors of the institution approved last April a historic capital increase of 13,000 million dollars that will allow the World Bank to help countries “to achieve their development goals while responding to crises such as climate change, pandemics, fragility or lack of investment in human capital “.
Likewise, the institutions of the World Bank Group have provided financing at levels “never before seen” outside of a financial crisis, the World Bank added as a result of Kim’s management at the head of the organization.
During Kim’s presidency, the 189 member countries of the institution set the World Bank’s priority goals in 2012 to end extreme poverty by 2030 and boost prosperity, focusing on 40% of the population in developing countries with fewer resources.
“The work of the World Bank Group is more important now than ever, as the aspirations of the poor are increasing all over the world and problems such as climate change, pandemics, hunger and refugees continue to grow both in scale and in its complexity, “he added.
Kim will now join a fund focused on infrastructure investment in developing countries, details of which will be announced later, according to the statement.
Infrastructure financing is, in fact, one of the greatest needs of the developing world today, according to Kim, who led the World Bank to collaborate with private sector partners in this aspect.
In addition to working on infrastructure investments, Kim announced that he will return to the board of directors of Partners In Health (PIH), a non-profit organization that offers medical services in countries such as Haiti, Peru, Russia and Rwanda, and which he co-founded. more than 30 years. (EFEUSA) .-
