Bank.org is so excited to see Ajay Banga at the World Bank.
Inside DevelopmentWorld Bank
Ajay Banga faces great expectations as he takes helm of World Bank
By Shabtai Gold // 02 June 2023
Wrold Bank President Ajay Banga. Photo by: Benedikt von Loebell / WEF / CC BY-NC-SA
Ajay Banga’s star power has been on display ever since it became clear that he would take over the World Bank.
Government and financial leaders rushed to meet the former Mastercard chief executive and praise his credentials as he embarked on a worldwide campaign tour this year. They heralded his meteoric rise through the global corporate ranks and passion for fusing the private and public sectors to solve the financial quandaries that trap people in poverty.
On Friday, Banga takes over the largest global anti-poverty lender — which across its five wings last year did $114 billion in loans, investments, grants, and guarantees — as it’s in the midst of a potentially radical transformation.
Debates rage about the trajectory of its ongoing reform process and whether the Washington-based institution will be capable of both fighting rising inequality and meeting clients’ increasingly urgent needs for money to deliver low-carbon economies and safeguard against worsening floods and droughts.
The biggest pressure will be avoiding tough tradeoffs on these two mandates — poverty and climate change — given the bank’s limited financial resources.
Banga’s many fans argue the former finance executive can balance multiple constituencies with competing priorities — a must in an institution whose board is divided between wealthy and lower-income nations with a range of views on issues such as climate.
They say Banga’s career trajectory is proof he can make the 78-year-old bank more modern, agile, and efficient over the coming five years and smooth over differences between rich shareholders pushing for more green spending and lower-income nations trying to ensure their citizens’ next meal.
“When Ajay is committed to something, he is unshakable,” said Shamina Singh, the founder of the Center for Inclusive Growth, Mastercard’s social impact hub, which was set up while Banga ran the company.
‘A pivot to urgency’ at the bank
Born in Pune, India, to a military family, Banga began his career at Nestlé in his home country, shifting jobs and eventually working his way over to financial services. He hit his corporate capstone as the chief executive of Mastercard, where he grew the firm’s size 10 times during his just over a decade in charge, turning it into the 21st largest company in the world.
This explosion in Mastercard’s growth demonstrates why the former CEO is well suited to take over the bank, according to Bhaskar Chakravorti, a professor at The Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy at Tufts University who has known the 63-year-old Banga for decades.
“In many ways, he is taking on an institution with an enormous footprint and enormous potential for impact but not quite achieving it,” Chakravorti said of the bank. “He’s done this before, stepped into organizations in the past, most recently Mastercard, where he was taking over an organization that was operating beneath its potential.”
Not only did Mastercard boom, but it made significant forays into financial inclusion of low-income people around the world through partnerships with governments and other firms.
That — along with his work on the board of the Red Cross and other nonprofits — has supersized Banga’s credentials for the job at the development bank, with more than $230 billion in loans just at its main wing, with tens of billions going to climate-linked projects.
And Banga will be capable of modernizing the lender for an era of overlapping quagmires — including debt traps, a higher cost of capital, and stretched government budgets — because of his laser-like focus on results, said Singh at the Center for Inclusive Growth.
“Over an Ajay Banga tenure, we’ll see a shift to agility, a pivot to urgency.”
— Shamina Singh, founder, Center for Inclusive Growth
But, Singh added, this will mean building on the existing skills at the bank, rather than some root-and-branch restructuring.
The U.S. Treasury Department, which handled Banga’s media appearances during his campaign, declined to make him available to Devex for an interview for this story.
Listen first
Those who know him well predict Banga won’t do a shock-and-awe shakeup on his first day or months at the lender, with its more than 25,000 full-time employees and consultants spread across the world.
Rather, he is likely to repeat the approach he took during his campaign over the last few months as he sought the job — conduct an internal “listening tour,” understand the different groups and their needs, and then find ways to bring it all together into a strategy.
“He’ll get to know the talent inside the organization and get to know the innovation — and then figure out how he takes it to a greater scale,” said Michael Schlein, the head of financial inclusion organization Accion and who worked with Banga in the financial services sector.
Banga himself is well aware of such expectations and has cautioned that he will not be coming through the bank’s doors on his first day with a “magic wand.” It’s a phrase he’s used before, saying in 2020 that shaping an organization is about putting one’s shoulder to the wheel.
“Culture doesn’t just come because you wave a magic wand. It comes through hard work,” he said as he was preparing the step down from Mastercard. But, as a leader this also means “you basically make people feel that your hand is on their back and not in their face,” he added.
Chakravorti, his old friend, said this is what makes Banga a good manager.
“He’s very approachable,” he said. “He’s down to Earth and he’s very clear about where he wants to take any organization.”
Private capital
Banga became a U.S. citizen about 15 years ago — meaning President Joe Biden was selecting an American when it nominated him in March for the job, keeping with a somewhat controversial tradition.
In the months since Banga has become more judicious with his public appearances. His limited public comments, however, have made two things abundantly clear: He does not think public money will be sufficient for development needs, and he thinks the climate crisis will require much of his attention.
“We know we need to get the private sector to be a constructive player in our mission,” Banga said in a speech in April, just before the World Bank Spring Meetings kicked off.
The problem, Banga has admitted, is that the private sector does not love taking unknown risks. He sees part of his new job as helping investors navigate uncertainty so that they are willing to put in money for projects they previously shunned.
Janet Yellen, the U.S. treasury secretary, focused on this in her message congratulating Banga on securing the role: “His track record of forging partnerships between the public sector, private sector, and non-profits uniquely equips him to help mobilize private capital.”
However, the so-called billions-to-trillions agenda has been on the table for years and is broadly seen as a failure — aid dollars have not led to the hoped-for hordes of private investment dollars.
More reading:
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► Malpass to staff: World Bank exploring climate finance, more lending
In addition, dozens of governments that raised money on capital markets and from new lenders like China are now facing a severe debt crisis. For Banga, this will mean a slew of headaches in the months to come as heavily indebted nations will not be able to readily attract the private capital they need for development.
More capital
Experts such as Annalisa Prizzon, a researcher at the Overseas Development Institute think-tank, have long argued that the World Bank should form more partnerships and generally play better with other organizations, including regional development banks, so that it can be more effective with its resources.
The bank “must use its capital better,” Prizzon said. However, even if it creates efficiencies and increases its risk profile to get more money out the door to client states — and makes the whole process smoother and faster for the borrowers — the bank will still need a capital injection so it can lend more, she said.
New capital would have to come from shareholders, including the United States, the largest one, though also other countries, including China — which is still a borrower from the bank, a point of contention on Capitol Hill that could become a bone for lawmakers to pick with Banga.
Homi Kharas, a former banker now at the Brookings Institution, concurs with Prizzon but argues that Banga will stand a better chance of getting Congressional approval if he brings “demonstrated proof” of an improved operation.
This will mean a strong focus on the reform agenda at the bank, which is already underway. Banga’s predecessor, David Malpass, began the process toward the end of 2022, under pressure from shareholders. Management is working through the next stages ahead of the World Bank’s Annual Meetings in October in Morocco, sources tell Devex.
So far, they’ve found $50 billion in additional lending over the next 10 years, but Banga will be tasked with finding ways to increase this figure and speed up the delivery.
More bipartisan, but more climate
Despite being nominated by a Democratic president and serving as an adviser to the Obama administration, Banga is not perceived as especially partisan. His nomination was welcomed by some Republicans and ran into almost no opposition in Washington.
Should he have to ask Congress for money, his ability to work across the political aisle will come in handy. Still, his worldview aligns with the current White House, including on climate.
“My logic is that the climate aspect is not separated from development,” Banga has said on different occasions. This echoes similar rhetoric from the U.S. Treasury Department.
This language excites climate activists, who want to see the bank leading a greener future.
But these hopeful expressions often run into the realities of the world. For example, low-income countries, which historically have emitted the least carbon, by and large, want the bank to focus on fighting poverty.
“Rather than pushing climate solutions that are conceived in and respond to historically high-emitting rich countries’ green priorities,” Zainab Usman, the head of the Africa Program at the Carnegie Endowment wrote in March. “[The] World Bank’s climate finance should reflect borrower countries’ growth, poverty reduction, and industrialization priorities.”
Even climate devotees such as Claire Healy at the E3G think-tank have warned that reforms at the World Bank “cannot be seen as the new Washington Consensus imposed from the global north.”
Banga is being brought in precisely because he understands emerging countries such as India, which are fighting extreme poverty while also facing climate concerns, such as heat waves.
He brings a clear sense of ambition, which critics of the Malpass tenure say has been lacking over the last years. But turning that gumption into action is where the rubber will meet the road.
About the author
Shabtai Gold
Shabtai Gold is a Senior Reporter based in Washington. He covers multilateral development banks, with a focus on the World Bank, along with trends in development finance. Prior to Devex, he worked for the German Press Agency, dpa, for more than a decade, with stints in Africa, Europe, and the Middle East, before relocating to Washington to cover politics and business."