U.S. Treasury’s Yellen, White House say World Bank needs major ‘reboot’ – Reuters

U.S. Treasury’s Yellen, White House say World Bank needs major ‘reboot’ – Reuters

WASHINGTON, April 21 (Reuters) - U.S. Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen and a top White House adviser called for major reforms at the World Bank on Thursday, saying the seven-decade-old multilateral development bank was not built to address multiple and overlapping global crises.

Yellen told reporters that both the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund were not designed to handle the multiple global crises they now face, including fallout from Russia's war in Ukraine and the COVID-19 pandemic, and they lack the resources to tackle climate change.

Yellen said the IMF, which has about $1 trillion in total lending resources, was intended to help individual countries deal with isolated crises, while the World Bank was created to finance development projects in countries that lacked access to capital markets.