… according to a Reuters report:
Nigerian Finance Minister Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala and former Colombian Finance Minister Jose Antonio Ocampo are set to be nominated to lead the World Bank, sources with knowledge of emerging market efforts to find candidates said on Tuesday.
It goes on: Continue reading
Between the idle speculation about various “dream” non-candidates (Lula, Sri Mulyani, Bachelet, Ngozi), the shameless self-promotion by academics (Sachs), and the attacks on Larry Summers after the White House leaked his name a month ago, and the NGOs’ unwillingness to go beyond criticizing the selection process to specify the selection criteria and how to apply them, the rumored White House frontrunner, Susan Rice, is in trouble.
Visibility at the UN is a big asset for an international job. In some ways it compensates for Dr. Rice’s lack of first-hand experience on development issues, and inexperience at running a big organization in the public sector.
The downside is that you make enemies. And Russia and China are not the kind of enemies you want if the White House was thinking of you as Robert Zoellick’s successor. Continue reading
Early last week the New York Times reported that despite all the previous fine rhetoric about the G20 and consultation and open process, the US Treasury Department had decided to rule by decree and impose its own candidate for the next president of the World Bank, the G20 be damned. U.S. officials informed G20 officials that the US intended to “retain control of the bank,” as the Times put it. According to the Times, the G20 countries grumbled but showed no sign of being willing to fight Treasury. The U.S. candidate would be a “lock,” the Times said, “since Europe will almost certainly support whomever Washington picks.” Continue reading
Ok, I know that most of you are interested in the changes about to occur in the World Bank but, am sorry to say, this generates very little interest in some of the largest countries of the so called “developing” world.
First, because we all know that the US will nominee the guy to the WB, just as Europe have always done with the IMF. Although some Southern governments, just like Brazil´s, pretend to believe in “reforms” in the Bretton Woods institutions, deep inside they know that winners are already chosen. Continue reading
As the global financial crisis threatens to undo years of progress in poor countries, the World Bank has raised its lending to unprecedented levels – $57 billion in 2011, more than double what it committed in 2008. With the cash, comes sway over developing countries’ policies, poverty programs, and governance systems.
The Bank only operates in developing countries, and it is people in these countries who must live day-to-day with its policies and programs. The Bank surely has an interest, then, in shoring up its legitimacy and credibility in its dealing with these clients. And indeed, the Bank holds itself up as a model of accountability, transparency and good governance.
Yet the very starting point of the Bank’s own governance, its leadership, is a stitch-up. Continue reading