World Bank chief Ajay Banga wants focus on climate, food security, pandemics

The newly appointed World Bank president Ajay Banga on Sunday backed widening the vision of the multilateral lender. “The World Bank should amend its vision to go from just being poverty-focused to saying yes, we want to create a world that is free of poverty but we have to be on a liveable planet…that’s kind of critical,” Banga said here.

Banga’s comments assume significance in the backdrop of the deliberations on the reform of Multilateral Development Banks (MDBs) at the G20. The G20 Finance Ministers and Central Bank Governors meeting beginning Monday is expected to discuss the report of the panel chaired by leading economist NK Singh and former US treasury secretary Larry Summers panel on MDBs.

He said the definition of trying to eradicate poverty is inadequate without including challenges with climate change, pandemics, fragility, food insecurity – that were intertwined crises.


Banga, 63, who took over as World Bank president on June 2, called for bolstering private sector flows and detailed the plans for the Private Sector Investment Lab launched last month.

“What I want to do with this lab is to focus on scaling transition finance in renewable energy…the whole World Bank evolution roadmap emphasises the importance of promoting a change in private finance for this very purpose,” he said, adding there was a need to understand what was holding back private investment.

“We have to get past that conversation to get to understand what holds back, what are the barriers holding back private investment in sustainable, quality infrastructure. Some of them are unfavourable policy environments and regulatory constraints.” He also flagged the absence of project de-risking and innovative finance.