Donald Trump’s nominee David Malpass, a World Bank sceptic who wants loans to China cut, is elected to lead the global lending organisation
- David Malpass says the World Bank should reduce lending to China because it is no longer a developing country
David Malpass, the Treasury official nominated by US President Donald Trump to head the 189-nation World Bank, was elected to the job on Friday.
Malpass was approved unanimously by the bank’s 25-member executive board on Friday. He will begin a five-year term next Tuesday succeeding Jim Yong Kim, an Obama administration pick who stepped down in January, three years before his term was to end.
Malpass was serving in the Trump administration as Treasury’s under secretary of international affairs. He has been a long-time sceptic of the World Bank and its sister lending organisation, the International Monetary Fund.
In his Treasury post, however, Malpass helped win support last year for a US$13 billion funding increase for the bank.
Malpass, 63, will be the 13th president of the World Bank. Americans have always headed the World Bank, while a European has always headed the IMF since both institutions were created in the mid-1940s.