United States:  Mr. David Malpass, the head of the World Bank, has announced he will leave in June 2023, almost a year before his tenure is up.

Mr. Malpass, who was appointed to his five-year term in 2019 by former US President Donald Trump, stated that he has made the decision to move on from the “enormous honour and privilege” of serving as the head of the international lender.

“With developing countries facing unprecedented crises, I’m proud that the Bank Group has responded with speed, scale, innovation, and impact,” Mr. Malpass remarked in a statement posted on the lender’s website.

The 189-nation organization was managed by Mr. Malpass, a former Bear Stearns senior economist who worked in multiple Republican administrations, amid a number of crises, including the COVID 19 epidemic and Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.

The International Monetary Fund, a fellow lender, is normally headed by a European, whereas the World Bank, which was established in 1944 to finance development projects worldwide, is customarily directed by an American. However, due to his views on climate change, the former US secretary of the Treasury for international affairs came under fire. Former US vice president Mr. Al Gore called him a climate sceptic, and climate campaigners demanded his resignation.

Mr. Malpass later recognised that fossil fuels produce greenhouse gas emissions and said he is not a climate change denial after failing to declare if he thought human-generated emissions were warming the world at a conference in September 2022.

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