(TheRedAlertNews.com) – President Joe Biden’s nominee to lead the World Bank has declared the international financial institution and private companies should spend “trillions” of dollars to tackle poverty and climate change.
Ajay Banga, 63, an Indian-born US businessman who was the CEO of Mastercard from 2010-2020, spoke in an interview with Axios amid his campaign for the job.
In February, he was nominated by President Joe Biden to become the new president of the World Bank Group’s five branch organizations.
Banga revealed he met with officials from 37 different countries over the past three weeks as part of what The Daily Caller described as an “aggressive campaign” to become the new President of the World Bank Group’s five branch organizations.
The report notes that Banga does not view the goals of fighting poverty and climate change as mutually exclusive, even though wealthy and developing nations increasingly pressure the World Bank to focus on one of the two issues.
“I think it’s a fallacious argument that says, either-or,” the former Mastercard CEO declared.
“I have every intention of focusing the bank and its people on the idea that this is an intertwined challenge,” he added.
Banga stated further the efforts needed to fight climate change and poverty would require “trillions of dollars a year” each.
He argued that the private sector should become a “constructive part of the solution.”
Also in February, a group of developing nations, which included China, Russia, and Iran, issued an open letter to the World Bank urging it to stay away from measures that could see it risk losing its AAA credit rating, as cited by The Financial Times.
In his Axios interview, Ajay Banga commented that the “only way” the World Bank would effectively fight climate change would be by keeping its triple-A rating.
Some environmental and climate advocates have criticized Biden for nominating Banga for World Bank president since the former Wall Street executive has “little background in climate issues.”
At the same time, the left’s climate change lobby has made clear its expectations that the next leader of the global financial institution “would aggressively tackle climate issues.”
The current President of the World Bank, David Malpass, was nominated by President Donald Trump and elected in April 2019.
He has served in senior jobs in the Treasury Department in the Reagan and Trump administrations and the State Department in the George W. Bush administration.
Earlier this year, Malpass announced he would resign from the job on June 30. The Daily Caller notes that he is the husband of Adele Malpass, the Daily Caller News Foundation president.
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