US World Bank Expected To Pick Someone Who Can Get The Job Done 

There are rumors circulating that Ajay Banga, the United States candidate for the position of director of the World Bank, has led large institutions and "helped bring 500 million unbanked people into the digital economy," according to US officials.

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People who have worked with him have described him as a straight-talking leader who is capable of working with people from different cultures in a productive manner.

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The path Banga has taken to become a potential leader of the development lender is unusual.

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In his childhood, he frequently moved around due to his father's job as an Indian army officer.

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Sikh by faith, Banga wears a full beard, wears a turban, and began his career in the confectionery industry at Nestle in India, taking on a number of sales and marketing assignments before moving on to PepsiCo and joining Citigroup in 1996.

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Having worked his way up through the ranks of the company, he became the region's chief executive before joining Mastercard in 2009 as its chief operating officer and then as its chief executive a year later.

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Upon joining General Atlantic in 2021, he became a director of the firm.

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The Indian-American leader, who was born and raised in India, has also been described as an Americanized baseball lover who "owns practically every Elvis Presley album you can think of," as mentioned in a Financial Times interview, despite the fact that he spent a part of his career there.

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Banga has been nominated to become president of the World Bank as the current World Bank chief David Malpass has recently announced that he will resign nearly a year ahead of schedule.

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The Washington-based development lender is currently accepting nominations for its open positions, with the deadline for submitting those nominations being March 29.

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“During his time at Mastercard, Banga's working style was 'get it done,'” said David Beasley, executive director of the World Food Program.

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"He's very articulate, he gets right to the point... and is very diplomatic when he does this," Beasley told AFP.

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"Banga is adept at working with people from different cultures," he added.

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As the next president of the World Bank, Clemence Landers, a policy fellow with the Center for Global Development, says, the next president will have to "unite a very large group of countries behind a common agenda."

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"The fact that there is someone who can speak to many different identities and to many different constituencies at the same time is absolutely critical in my opinion,” she told AFP.

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A candidate for the position would have to be able to make the lender more capable of responding to the changing needs of countries, and the costs associated with doing this job are on the rise, she said.

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"It is absolutely crucial that this person is not only seen as representing the US voice but is also seen as representing the voices of many of the different parts of this institution at large," said Landers.

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In general, the head of the World Bank is usually an American, while the head of the International Monetary Fund is ordinarily a European.

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Recently, however, there has been a growing trend among emerging market countries to challenge this unwritten arrangement.

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