World Bank sounded the alarm bells early this year by stating what was widely feared—global growth will plummet from 5.5% in 2021 to 4.1% in 2022 and 3.2% in 2023 as pent-up demand dissipates amid unwinding of fiscal and monetary support across the world.
Against such a backdrop, it was baptism by fire for Anshula Kant, who joined as managing director and chief financial officer of the World Bank Group in October 2019. She is pivotal to ensuring that private investment flows to emerging and frontier markets, which have been extremely low relative to developed markets, do not dry up. Because by 2023, even as macroeconomic challenges being faced by advanced economies will threaten a full output recovery, for emerging and developing economies, investment growth will remain 4% below its pre-pandemic trend. Kant, who has more than 35 years of experience in banking, says a bigger challenge is meeting developing economies’ climate goals given their limited resources. “Without funds flowing to them, we cannot achieve our collective goal of a sustainable future,” Kant said at a recent roundtable of emerging market sovereign debt investors. — V. Keshavdev