World Bank Group President Ajay Banga is scheduled to address the concluding plenary session of the IMF–World Bank Annual Meetings in Bangkok on 16 October, with job creation expected to feature prominently in his remarks. Opportunities for a rapidly expanding youth population are anticipated to form a central part of his address.
Banga, who was born in Pune and educated at Indian institutions, will share the platform at the 16 October plenary with IMF Managing Director Kristalina Georgieva. According to a World Bank statement, the Annual Meetings — running from 12 to 18 October — have been organised around the themes of jobs, investment, growth, and practical development solutions.
Job creation has stood at the centre of Banga's agenda since he took office, with a particular focus on opening opportunities for young people entering the labour market. At a panel discussion on artificial intelligence and employment held earlier in the week, he put forward a projection that roughly 1.2 billion people would reach adulthood over the following 15 years.
The role of private investment in employment generation is central to his argument. Banga has stated that while governments set the conditions for economic activity, between three-quarters and just over four-fifths of all jobs in a given country are produced by the private sector.
Banga has also argued that lower-income nations stand to gain more from integrating AI into everyday services — including schooling, healthcare delivery, and agricultural support — than from directing resources exclusively toward building foundational language models. The World Bank has labelled this methodology "small AI."
Speaking at a civil society town hall held alongside the meetings, Banga described development finance as operating under mounting strain, citing narrowing fiscal space, growing debt burdens, pressure on aid budgets, and elevated costs for energy and fertilisers. He called for stretching constrained public resources further and highlighted the World Bank's Philanthropy Hub — unveiled in Bangkok on 12 October — as a vehicle for drawing additional capital into development work.
India holds both a substantial ownership stake in the World Bank and a place among the institution's top recipients of lending, giving it a dual role within the organisation. Banga was appointed to the institution's top position on the strength of a United States nomination and stepped into the role partway through 2023.
The speech arrives at a moment when IMF projections point to a deceleration in worldwide economic output, driven by elevated energy costs and mounting levels of government borrowing.
