With the world facing numerous shocks at once, from spiking food prices to heavy debt burdens, the World Bank’s Axel van Trotsenburg is eager to show the situation is under control while also stressing the urgency of the moment.
It’s a balancing act that the bank’s managing director of operations has honed in his 25-plus years in leadership at the anti-poverty lender. As he starts the interview with Devex on Tuesday, he mentions that he has some 60 meetings on his calendar this week during the Spring Meetings. About half of them are country-specific, a sign of the needs across lower-income nations.
“We’re living through multiple crises,” he says, in what has become the meetings’ common refrain, heard on everyone’s lips from ministers to bank officials to policy analysts.