Remarks by World Bank Group President Ajay Banga at the 2026 Annual Meetings Plenary

BANGKOK – World Bank Group President Ajay Banga today delivered plenary remarks at the 2026 World Bank Group-IMF Annual Meetings, outlining progress on the institution’s reform agenda and its strategy to address the global jobs challenge.

In his remarks, President Banga reflected on the three years since he joined the World Bank Group in June 2023, noting that the institution has worked to make scarce resources go further while helping countries create jobs at scale.
“Over the next 10 to 15 years, 1.2 billion young people will arrive at a job market projected to offer only about 400 million jobs. This generation will shape the next century. The choices we make today will help determine how.”
Reforming the World Bank Group to Deliver More

President Banga highlighted institutional reforms undertaken to increase speed, impact, and capacity:
• Cut project preparation from 19 months to nine months                                                            • Replaced 153 scorecard measures with 22 focused on impact                                                  • Increased pay-for-results financing from about one-third to half                                         • Brought public and private sector teams together around country-led strategies             • Reengineered the balance sheet, creating more than $100 billion in additional IBRD lending capacity over a decade
He also noted strengthened collaboration among Multilateral Development Banks, with the co-financing pipeline tripling in two years to about 250 projects seeking $138 billion in financing.
Mobilizing Private Capital and Focusing on Jobs
The President outlined the World Bank Group’s jobs strategy, built on three pillars: physical and human infrastructure; regulatory and policy certainty; and scale through tools to de-risk investment.

On results:
• In FY22, the World Bank Group mobilized roughly $35 billion in private capital.          Last year: $112 billion — a threefold increase.                                                                   • Alongside its own financing, total financing exceeded $230 billion                                           • Nearly 55 percent of financing and mobilized private capital went to infrastructure and energy, agribusiness, health, tourism, and value-added manufacturing                                                       • Total World Bank Group climate co-benefits reached $96 billion, including $48 billion from private capital
President Banga noted that 35 countries have moved from IDA to IBRD and 23 are now IDA donors.
Execution at Scale: Country Compacts and Sector Ambitions
President Banga said the future of development depends on bringing public finance, private investment, philanthropy, and technology together around what each country needs, through bespoke country strategies and compacts.

He highlighted progress on flagship ambitions:
• Energy – Mission 300: With the African Development Bank, ambition to bring electricity to 300 million people in Africa by 2030. To date, 59 million have gained access, with pace accelerating to 28 million last year. Approach includes full mix of renewables, hydro, gas where appropriate, nuclear where it makes sense, transmission, grids and storage.                                                                     • Water: Ambition with partners to improve water security for up to one billion people by 2030, World Bank Group committed to 400 million. 20 country compacts provide path to 150 million people with clean water.                • Agriculture – AgriConnect: Working with partners to help 300 million smallholder farmers move from subsistence to surplus by 2030, World Bank Group committed to 200 million. Pipeline built to support 82 million farmers in first full year.                                      • Health – HealthWorks: Ambition to reach 1.5 billion people with quality, affordable health services by 2030, with roughly 600 million already reached.                                      • Critical Minerals: Plan to quintuple business in five years, with first country compacts launched this week.                            • Economic Corridors: 52 new projects launched last year, up from 20 three years earlier.
He also outlined initiatives on practical AI, skills connected to jobs, and a new MSME strategy to make small firms more visible, connected, enabled, and funded.
Creating an Emerging-Market Development Asset Class
President Banga announced that six multilateral development banks are creating common ways to assess, document, package, and transfer investments — so a project financed today can be held by another investor tomorrow.
“Repeated across institutions and markets, that begins to create something much bigger: an emerging-market development asset class. If we get this right, the size of our balance sheet no longer defines the scale of our ambition — and we will bend the curve of development forever.”
He closed by invoking the institution’s founding in Bretton Woods in 1944:
“A job is not a statistic. A job is dignity. The jobs gap is a projection. It does not have to be our future.”