The World Bank announced on Monday that Jim Yong
Kim will be the organisation’s next president, following a heated race that saw
developing countries challenging the US for the Washington-based international
financial institution’s top post.
The election of Kim, Washington’s candidate for the
position, is not surprising. The head of the World
Bank has traditionally been from the US, while the chief of the Bank’s sister
institution, the International Monetary Fund, is usually a European, thanks to
an informal agreement between the two sides when the institutions were
established after the Second World War.
However, this marks the first time in the bank’s
history that it has considered multiple candidates for its top position, and
Kim will face the immediate challenge of reconciling differences caused by a
bitter election.
The two other candidates were José Antonio Ocampo, Colombia’s former finance minister, and Nigerian
finance minister Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala;
Ocampo had dropped out of the race on Friday, backing
Okonjo-Iweala’s candidacy.
Already Kim’s main challenger has called the
transparency and democratic nature of the voting process into question, while
at the same time congratulating Kim.
Kim is unique in comparison to previous World Bank
chiefs, being a doctor and anthropologist by training, not a banker,
politician, or US foreign policymaker, the traditional professions of his
predecessors.
He is also a global health expert who has worked at
the World Health Organization and founded Partners in Health. In both
capacities Kim has focused on heath programmes in poor countries.
BRICS pushing for reform
The power dynamics in global lending and financial
support for developing countries have changed drastically in recent years, with
emerging economies being credited as major drivers of economic growth following
the crisis. Many of these emerging economies also have deep cash reserves and
have already become leading investors and lenders to poorer developing
economies.
While emerging economies were granted an increased
relative voting share in 2010 at the World Bank, the BRICS countries - Brazil,
Russia, India, and China - have repeatedly called for a major overhaul of the
Bretton Woods institutions, a goal that they reiterated at their annual summit
in New Delhi last month.
At the summit, BRICS leaders urged the World Bank
leadership to commit to reform that “truly reflects the vision of all its
members, including the governance structure that reflects current economic and
political reality.”
The BRICS had been hopeful that a strong candidate
from the developing world could challenge the US’ hold on the Bank’s top spot. Okonjo-Iwela had been nominated in a rare show of unity
between the sub-Saharan rivals South Africa, Nigeria, and Angola.
However, the developing economies could not forge
similar agreement to present a unified backing for one developing country
candidate. It was only days before the vote that Ocampo
dropped out of the race and put his support behind Okonjo-Iweala.
In the end, sources close to the voting said that
China and India backed Kim in executive board deliberations on Monday,
according to the New York Times.
However, BRICS countries are likely to support the
new president regardless of whoever wins, Rogério Studart, executive director of the World Bank representing
Brazil, commented to the Financial Times prior to the decision’s announcement,
as “the institution is more important.”