New World Bank head warns of another global economic slowdown

Many countries in the under-developed world have seen economic growth over the last 10 to 15 years. The new head of the World Bank today is telling the world to keep it up and warns that the world could be headed for another economic slump.

In an interview with Bloomberg, new World Bank head Jim Yong Kim warns that a slowdown in investments could reverse all of the gains made in Africa and Latin America. Writers Sara Eisen and Andrew Joyce have this detail of the interview. 

“Our job now is to make sure the growth over the last five years that we’ve seen in Africa and Latin America is not destroyed by further worsening in the situation,” Kim said in an interview with Bloomberg Television today on a Japanese bullet train to Sendai, a city in the region hit hardest by last year’s earthquake and tsunami.

The World Bank and International Monetary Fund are holding their annual meetings in Tokyo this week as low growth in the richest economies hurts developing counterparts from China to Brazil to South Africa. Kim endorsed the IMF’s view that there is an “alarmingly high risk” of a steeper world slowdown, with a one-in-six chance of growth slipping below 2 percent.

Kim, 52, said that more than half of global growth over last five years has come from developing nations, where job creation is key.

“We’re working very actively with all our member countries to find ways to spur growth in the private sector in Africa, Latin America, everywhere,” he said.

The Washington-based lender said last week that the global economy will need to create 600 million new jobs between 2005 and 2020 to absorb young people entering the work force and spur development.