Keep the cap at whatever the cost. For Jim Yong Kim, the president just renewed the world Bank (WB), the juggernaut of economic development which he has headed since 2012 has become even ” the most daring and flexible “, in the service of a key objective : ” the eradication of extreme poverty “.
This message, he will reaffirm in front of a who’s who of the finance world, met from 4 to 9 October in Washington, d.c., for the annual general meetings of the institution and the international monetary Fund (IMF). He was already hammered, receiving, on the 27th of September, the confirmation of the renewal of its mandate.
Ambitious. But the impeccable slogan should not mask the agitation that reigns within the organization. And that has not arranged the renewal express ” doctor Kim “. At the end of August, this American, 56 years old, born in South Korea, declare themselves to be a candidate for his succession in July 2017. The u.s. Treasury offers him instantly to his support. A month later, the matter is concluded. Thus perpetuates the immutable tradition that sees the United States to reserve to themselves the direction of the BM, while the Europeans maintain that the IMF, the two sister institutions of the Bretton Woods agreements of 1944.
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Yet, among the 15 000 agents of the group, a wind of protest blows for months. In early August, the staff association denounces ” crisis of leadership “. A quarantine of former officials reiterate the critical mid-September, beating himself in the Financial Times the absence of a ” clear strategic direction “ and select ” precipitated “. the ” You can’t appeal to the good governance in the countries where we operate and organize in the home a process opaque, quick-and-dirty, to ten months of the due date “, sums up a part.
$ 400 million in savings
The disenchantment of contrast with the enthusiastic reception to the unexpected appointment of Mr. Kim in 2012. Former bush doctor, this anthropologist was the first president of the WB to be from neither the finance nor the political world. Shortly after arriving, he spends hours in the video conference with the employees. And decreed the mobilization against the bureaucracy, the baronnies and the jump in expenses.
Las. Led to the rough and ready way, the uproar aroused the emotion. the ” he thought He had everything together, and quickly. It was a lot for the team, even if he asked the right questions “, points out a senior official of the bank. The recourse to consultants from McKinsey and advisors of luxury, as the Harvard professor Michael Porter, is to cringe, then that is a savings plan of $ 400 million (€356 million) over three years. In 2015 and 2016, in the case of internal investigations, only one-third of employees said understand where management wants to lead them.
Even on the highest floors, the mood is not good. Departures, forced or voluntary, are chained for the past four years. The fault, it seems, to the personality of Jim Yong Kim and his management style. the ” It is someone of extraordinarily seductive, but with an ego disproportionate and hates the critic, squeaks a young elder. in He made the emptiness around him. “
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outside observers do him credit to have wanted to remove the dust from the institution after two decades without reforms. Under his leadership, the lending capacity is increased. More controversial is the reorganization of the BM, until then divided into six regional blocks around fourteen centers of expertise (water, education, climate, etc.).
On the bottom, Mr. Kim is noted by assigning to the bank a double audacious goal : to end extreme poverty by 2030 and boosting the incomes of 40 % of the poorest in the world. A mission to progress difficult to measure. But in the service of which the BM is eager to tread new ground. At the end of September, it announced that its branch devoted to the poorest countries (IDA) could now raise money on the markets.
new competition
The presidency, Kim is also distinguished by its mobilization against the Ebola virus. The institution was first in line to release funds to countries affected. She is now up an emergency fund against pandemics, with $ 500 million.
” because of the past of Mr. Kim, we hear a lot of the bank on these subjects, and this is good, but it is first an institution of economic and financial, hue Jean-Louis Sarbib, a former vice-president of the WB. It is imperative that, on its core business, it would be perceived as the organization primus inter pares. Not easy if frames discouraged to continue from, and therefore to the de-qualifying. “
In fact, the world Bank must work with a new competition : that of the asian Bank for investment in infrastructure, which is managed by Beijing, and that of the development Bank of the BRICS (Brazil, Russia, India, China, South Africa). The big borrowers of yesterday have become, in their turn, major creditors.
The relationship with the emerging economies will be a key in years to come. By computation or by disunity, these countries have not submitted any competitor in the face of Mr Kim. They expect nothing less than a reform of representativeness, which grants more weight to the rich countries. Otherwise, some might want to do more than play the game of a multilateral system in which the West reserves the leadership for over seventy years.
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