By Andrea Shalal
(Reuters) – The heads of the World Bank and International Monetary Fund on Tuesday said they would work with the incoming U.S. administration of Republican Donald Trump to continue to provide financing to developing countries hit by climate change.
IMF chief Kristalina Georgieva told a panel during the U.N. COP29 climate summit in Azerbaijan that the global lender had worked with Trump during his previous term and looked forward to doing so again. “They have a mandate from the American people,” she said.
Georgieva said she was confident that the U.S. private sector would continue to invest in green technologies. “It is the business proposition to stay ahead of the curve, and I have no doubt that this will continue,” she said.
The election of Trump, who is expected to pull the United States back from global efforts to fight climate change, has raised questions about the ability of the IMF and the World Bank – where the U.S. is the largest shareholder – to ramp up funding for countries around climate-related issues.
This year’s summit is meant to focus on raising hundreds of billions of dollars to fund a global transition to cleaner energy sources and limit the climate damage caused by carbon emissions by the world’s largest countries, including the U.S.
Ajay Banga, president of the World Bank, said Trump won by a historic margin, which demanded respect, and highlighted the bank’s work to become more efficient and effective, while encouraging increasing private investment in climate finance.”We’re going to talk to him. That’s our job,” he said, noting that during his 17 months at the helm of the bank, there had also been changes in government in the bank’s four other biggest donors – Germany, France, Japan and Britain.
Trump, who shuns multilateralism, has promised massive tariff increases on Chinese goods and other imports as part of his “America First” agenda.
The conservative Republican “Project 2025” agenda, from which Trump has distanced himself, calls for U.S. withdrawal from the IMF and World Bank to pursue only bilateral development and financial aid in line with U.S. interests.
Mohamed Jameel Al Ramahi, CEO of UAE green energy group Masdar, said the United States remained a key market, despite changes in political leadership, and the company would continue expanding its footprint there.
“A lot of red states in the U.S. … deploy a lot of renewables. They are very supportive of energy, so we don’t really see any impact, honestly,” he said, referring to Republican-controlled states.
(Reporting by Andrea Shalal; Editing by Marguerita Choy)
