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Nearly 40 world leaders and many finance executives, including Managing Director of the International Monetary Fund, Christine Lagarde, gathered in Beijing for the second Road and Road Infrastructure Summit in China, but the new President of the World Bank does not belong to it.
David Malpbad, who has just been appointed to a senior position in the Trump administration at the US Treasury Department, makes his first overseas trip as World Bank leader in sub-Saharan Africa to outline his vision of poverty reduction program and bank development.
A spokesman for the World Bank said that Malpbad would travel this weekend to Madagascar, Ethiopia and Mozambique before flying to Egypt and a conference on debt in Paris. Malpbad said Africa is a top priority for the bank because of its high concentration of the world's poorest people.
World Bank Managing Director Kristalina Georgieva, interim president of the leadership selection process, represents the institution at the summit and has accepted China's invitation before Malpbad was launched at the bank, the spokesman said. word of the bank.
Former World Bank President Jim Yong Kim attended the first summit of the Chinese belt two years ago.
Ethiopia and Mozambique, leaders of two of the countries participating in the Malpbad trip, are among the African leaders also present at this year's summit.
Malpbad, who was the Undersecretary for International Treasury Affairs, has been a long-time critic of China's belt and road lending practices in China and has sounded the alarm about them in the countries of China. G7 and G20.
"In the area of lending, China often does not meet international standards in areas such as the fight against corruption, export credits and the search for coordinated and sustainable solutions to payment difficulties, such as those wanted in the Paris Club, "Malpbad told the US House Financial Services. sub-committee in December.
Its absence coincides with a significant downgrading of the Belt and Road Summit by the United States as the Trump government attempted to negotiate an agreement to resolve long-standing trade and intellectual property disputes with China – discussions that Malpbad often took part in.
No senior US official will be present, said a spokesman for the US State Department, citing similar concerns about Belt and Road's debt.
At the IMF and World Bank Spring Meetings, Malpbad said this month that achieving the lender's development goals of ending extreme poverty by 2030 calls for a focus. on Africa.
"By the year 2030, nearly 9 out of 10 extremely poor people will be Africans and half of the world's poor will live in fragile and conflict-affected environments," he said at a news conference. press conference. "This calls for urgent action on the part of the countries themselves and the global community."
On his first day at work, he told reporters he wanted to "transform" the bank's relationship with China into a relationship in which Beijing would contribute more to capital and cooperate more closely with the bank on development issues. and poverty reduction.
Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin, former president of Malpbad, told lawmakers that the World Bank, led by Malpbad, and a new US development agency "may be a serious competitor of Belt and Road (China)".
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