World Bank outlines strategy for job creation

The World Bank Group has outlined a three-part strategy focused on improving conditions, reforming policies, and unlocking private-sector potential to facilitate job creation. The president of the World Bank, Ajay Banga, said this on Tuesday in Washington DC, during a town-hall with civil society organisations on the sidelines of the 2025 Annual Meetings of the IMF/World Bank Group. According to him, the public sector depends on job creation over time, and how it can grow. “Our economists can not hire the right people. They need the right conditions to start, to grow, to hire. Those conditions do not happen by accident. And that is where the World Bank Group and our friends bring something unique. We have a three-pillar job strategy to reflect this thinking. A lot of it is informed by a jobs council which met this morning as well,” he said. Mr Banga said that the three pillars included governments taking the lead, often with input from the private sector, to build the human and the physical infrastructure, like roads, ports, electricity and digitisation.
He said that the public arms of the World Bank, the International Bank for Reconstruction and Development and the International Development Association, financed the investments. He said that they helped countries to use resources effectively., adding that the World Bank establishes the rules for public-private partnerships. “Second, an environment where businesses know the rules, and they can trust the playing field. Governments need to establish clear land rights, predictable taxes and transparent institutions. We strive to support these reforms through our knowledge bank, offering policy tools and performance-based finance,” he said. He said that for the third pillar, once the basics were in place, the World Bank Group helped the private sector scale and reward risk-taking.
According to him, this is done by providing capital, equity, guarantees, and back-to-back financing for the settlement of investor disputes. “That continuum, foundation, policy, and capital is how we think we can translate ambition into jobs. We have identified five sectors with the potential to create jobs that are close to where people live, meaning not relying on outsourcing jobs from the Western world as the only way to create jobs.
”Infrastructure and energy is the first sector, both infrastructure within that energy as well. Second, agribusiness. This annual meeting is very focused on the idea of agribusiness,” he said. He described healthcare, tourism, and value-added manufacturing growth industries, and not aid-dependent sectors. “They generate locally relevant jobs. They attract real investment that requires the capital, the technology and the ingenuity of the private sector. That is the idea behind the private sector lab, to confront the persistent barriers that keep investors on the sidelines and design tools to help overcome them,” he said.