Dr. Kim is next World Bank president?

The choice for the next World Bank president is not in the hands of those in the developing world who directly feels the influence of the bank, but is with the United States–the biggest shareholder-funder of the bank.

So when US president Barack Obama announced the surprise nomination of Dr. Jim Yong Kim, a former senior official of the World Health Organization, earlier nominees from Nigeria or Colombia, and even famous economist Jeffrey Sachs who nominated himself, may be sidelined.

Nominating Kim, however, is considered a compromise between pressures to keep an American or a non-American in the bank’s top post. Kim was born in South Korea but had an all-American childhood after his family moved to Iowa. He earned his medical and Ph.D. degrees at Harvard. Current president Robert Zoellick ends his term in June.

The World Bank is one of the active partners of the Philippine government in development efforts.

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