US President Barack Obama on Friday nominated a Korean American known for his work in fighting disease in impoverished countries to lead the World Bank, a job emerging economies are contesting for the first time.
Jim Yong Kim, 52, is president of Dartmouth College, an Ivy League school in New Hampshire, and former director of the department of HIV/AIDS at the WHO.
Despite the challenge from emerging nations — Nigerian Minister of Finance Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala and former Colombian finance minister Jose Antonio Ocampo were also nominated — the US is expected to maintain its grip on the position, which it has held since the bank was founded after World War II.
Photo: AFP / Dartmouth College
“He’s worked from Asia to Africa to the Americas — from capitals to small villages,” Obama said. “His personal story exemplifies the great diversity of our country and the fact that anyone can make it as far as he has as long as they’re willing to work hard and look out for others.”
The choice came as a surprise.
Washington’s past picks for the World Bank presidency have had more standing in political circles and Kim’s name had not surfaced in several media reports on potential nominees.
Okonjo-Iweala, a respected economist and diplomat, is likely to draw support from many emerging nations that want to see the bank focus more on helping their economies develop and less on traditional poverty-fighting aid. Her backing by Angola, Nigeria and South Africa was a rare example of unity among countries often at loggerheads.
Ocampo’s nomination by Brazil also signaled the desire of emerging markets to have a competitive process as they move to try to upend the tradition of always having an American lead the World Bank and a European lead the IMF.
World Bank president Robert Zoellick steps down at the end of June.
“You will see more of a debate, an assessment of the merits of the different candidates and the direction of the bank,” former IMF official Arvind Subramanian said.
“It is not a slam dunk. It is not an obvious choice,” he said of the US nominee.
However, Washington retains the largest single voting share at the World Bank and can expect the support of European nations and Japan, the bank’s second-largest voting member.
Paul Farmer, a cofounder with Kim of the non-profit Partners in Health, which serves some of the world’s poorest countries, said the nominee would bring to the post a real-world understanding of poverty and a sense of purpose.
“A lot of people who live in poverty in the world today feel that the World Bank has stalled and needs new vision,” Farmer, the chairman of the Department of Global Health at Harvard University, said in Kigali, Rwanda. “One of his qualities is that boldness of vision.”
US economist Jeffrey Sachs, who had been put forward for the job by a group of small countries, withdrew and threw his support to Kim. He had cast his uphill candidacy as an effort to break Washington’s penchant for political appointments.
India said it wanted to consult the other so-called BRICS countries — Brazil, Russia, China and South Africa — before deciding, and Mexico also said it was keeping an open mind.
The rise of emerging economies such as China, India and Brazil has put pressure on the US and Europe to throw open the selection process for both the bank and the IMF. Last year, all of the bank’s 187 member countries agreed on a transparent, merit-based process.
The World Bank board of member countries has promised to make a decision by the time of the IMF and World Bank semi-annual meetings on April 21.
The new World Bank chief will take over at a time when the eurozone’s debt crisis is weighing on the global recovery, undercutting demand in the poorer nations that often rely on funding from the bank.
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