Relations and recent events in this country, including the secession attempt by catalonia. Also, the White House Press secretary Sarah Sanders at 2 00 p. M. Good afternoon and welcome. I am a former president of the National Press club. I am currently president of the society of American Business editors and writers. The National Press club is the worlds leading professional organization for journalists to our professions future through our programming with events such as this, while working to foster a free press around the world. For more information about the club, three please visit the website at press. Org. On behalf of our members, worldwide, i would like to welcome our speaker and those of you in the audience. Our head table includes guests of our speaker as well as working journalists. Constantly, we remind people that if you hear applause in the audience, we would like to note that general members members of the general public attend. We would also like to welcome our cspan and other audiences, today. You can follow the action live live. Itter using mpc after the speaker, we will have a question and answer period. I would ask each of you to stand briefly as your name is announced and hold off on the applause until afterward. Welcoming the intern at weiner public news and a student at georgetown university, bravely studying journalism and government. We want to note that she is working with the Headliners Team member who organized todays luncheon. That is robert weiner, president of weiner public news. Thank you for all of your work. Gillian rich is a reporter at investors business daily. The Vice President for external and corporate relations with the World Bank Group. , our local abc affiliate. s chief executive officer at the world bank. Skipping over the podium, to my martin, Betsy Fischer executive in residence at american university. Speaker,over our guest the senior economic adviser writer. The captain with the u. S. Navy, retired executive director of first global challenge. Thank you for your service. A little sleightofhand and musical chairs. Fiirman and ceo of investment group. A round of applause for our head table group. Thank you. [applause] now to our guest speaker, today. The world bank was created at the Bretton Woods conference in 1944 along with the International Monetary fund, with which it is often confused. The world bank might be described as the Biggest Community bank on the planet. The main mission involves ,rojects targeting local levels projects like alleviating poverty and helping women to climb the economic ladder and those focusing on improving the health of those living in the developing world. This is the work of the world bank under the leadership of dr. Jim young kim, its current president. He was born in south korea but spent most of his childhood growing up in iowa. A team leader going back to his youth, he was quarterback of his High School Football team. Hailing from a family of high achievers, his father taught dentistry and his mother got a phd in philosophy. He joins us to discuss the banks outlook for the World Economy and some of the key projects and goals for 2018 and beyond. He began his first term as president in 2012, was reappointed in 2016 to a second fiveyear term. The world bank is comprised of five institutions providing funding and Technical Assistance to countries and private organizations with the goal of providingoverty and prosperity around the world. Did not come from the political or financial arenas. As background is in public health, medicine and academic leadership. He was one of several founders of partners health, providing communitybased health care in poor countries. He would go on to lead the World Health OrganizationsWorld Health Organizations hiv program. Admission, a couple decades ago, he was part of a movement he described as sought to close the world bank, that he is glad that movement failed. Leadership, the world bank is calling for the end of extreme poverty by 2030 and to brew boost shared prosperity. How to meet those goals . Presse a hint at a recent conference when he referenced positive trends but also had words of caution. He said after several years of disappointing growth, the Global Economy has begun to accelerate. Trade is picking up but investment remains weak. He noted concern about risk, including the rise in protectionism, policy uncertainty and potential Financial Market turbulence. As you can tell, we have plenty to discuss and think about. Please give a warm welcome to dr. Jim young kim. [applause] thank you so much. Commentsart with some but i look forward to the discussion. So glad to be here at the press club. Frantic new of cycles and competition for our attention, i just want to step back and reflect on what we have been doing at the World Bank Group, to try to build what i have been calling the new foundation of human solidarity. Is at a time when these very foundations of solidarity are under question and sometimes even under attack. Peace and stability are critical to our efforts to grow economies and help people lift themselves out of poverty. We recently launched a report that surveyed 750 multinational investors and Corporate Executives and we asked them, what is most important to you when you think about investing in a developing country . The top three issues where political stability, security and the right regulatory environment. All of which are key areas of focus for our work. Some of the good news about the Global Economy. Growth is robust worldwide. And the Second Quarter of last year saw the highest quarterly growth rates since 2010. Trade is picking up around the world. Millions of people each year continue to lift themselves out of poverty. This is also a time when multiple crises are either in full bloom or looming on the horizon. Conflict, pandemics, Climate Change and famine are impacting people around the world and contributed to a historic number of people who have been forced to migrate. Countries in nearly every region are turning inward. International and homegrown terrorists now infect every corner of the world. It feels increasingly like the increasingly interconnected community is pulling away from each other. The World Bank Group was founded to tackle these kinds of challenges and if you read back in some of the historical documents, it is striking how much the language of that time could apply to today. We have some specific missions and goals which i will talk about. As a institution, we are part of the post1945 world order that was predicated on the notion that what affects one city, one country, one region and have immediate and Lasting Impact on all of us. That is a notion that has driven our work and it drives the entire multilateral system. The global order that has helped ensure decades of relative peace and prosperity was, in many ways, an american vision. Long before it was clear the allies would win world war ii, president Franklin Roosevelt began looking beyond the war. Knew that the existing institutions would not be enough to shape the postworld order. The United States had to build an entirely new system that would not just prevent wars but ensure a lasting peace. He knew that stable Global Financial systems were critical, so he cast his treasury secretary at the time, to design it. The treasury departments plan for a fund to oversee Global Financial stability and a bank to support reconstruction and development was the foundation for what became the imf and the World Bank Group. In the summer of 1944, and the Mount Washington resort in brentwood, a group of people met and at that time, the allied forces were fighting in normandy and the remarkable thing about the conference is it happened while the war was still going on. China had sent a representative. And the 44 nations that attended spoke about the most critical issues. When the secretary opened the conference, he said that the goal was to create, a dynamic World Economy in which the people of every nation will be able to realize their potentiality in peace. To raise their own standards of living and enjoying increasingly, the fruits of material progress. For freedom of opportunity is the foundation for all other freedoms. For the past 70 years, that has helped ensure relative peace and stability and from the very beginning, the mission of the World Bank Group has been to help ensure that everyone has opportunity. The world banks First Mission was to Fund Reconstruction in europe. The first loan they world bank ever made was to france. After the announcement of the Marshall Plan by general marshall, the focus of the world bank shifted to development in poverty reduction. Institution grew and evolved into the World Bank Organization that exists today. Five institutions that provide countries with specialized financial tools and global knowledge. We are the only global Multilateral Development institution and the Value Proposition is that we bring knowledge from every corner of the earth to every one of our clients. The very First Institution formed is the International Bank for reconstruction and development. They use their aaa rating to issue bonds and financial aid. At liable or 15 basis points which is not quite as good as the u. S. Treasury, but close. We borrow money in the Capital Markets and provide loans to middle Income Countries. It is critical to invest in middle Income Countries because they represent about one third of global gdp. In addition to being major engines of Global Economic growth, more than two thirds of People Living in poverty live in middle Income Countries. Another arm of the bank is the International Development association. It was founded at the request of president eisenhower. Deep connections to the history of the United States. Provided to concessional loans with maturity of about 40 years and grants to the worlds poorest countries. We have about 75 countries that qualify for these low interest loans. Also have a private sector arm that was founded 60 years ago. The International Finance corporation invests in the private sector in developing countries. They make Equity Investments in companies, uses tools such as first loss guarantees to derisk sectors and creates markets to bring in other private sector investment. The first loan ever provided by ifc was to the German Company who wanted to invest in resilient at time when brazil was truly a frontier market. We have another agency, the multilateral verity agency that helps the rest project sectors in entire countries by providing Political Risk insurance and enhancement. They actually invented Political Risk insurance. If a Company Wants to invest in a country, once to purchase a company and they are worried about bad things happening like a change in regime and the regime nationalizes that company, you can buy insurance to protect you against that prop possibility. There are Many Companies that do it and it is sometimes the Critical Link to making a company invest or not invest. We have our International Center for the settlement of investment disputes which facilitates arbitration between international investors. It has helped settle many disputes around the world, including several related to nafta. Group staffank walking our building, they pass a large sign that reads, our dream is a world free of poverty. That was put up my microcassette by my predecessor. Of the World Bank Group contributes to that dream of lifting people out of poverty. One of the great Untold Stories as we have made tremendous progress in the past three decades in reducing poverty. The percentage of people in the world living in extreme poverty which is living on less than one dollar 90 1. 90 per day has gone from 30 to less than 10 . Nearly 1. 1 billion people have lived themselves out of poverty since 1990. The majority of those were in china, which was responsible for lifting more than 700 Million People out of extreme poverty. There is still work to do. Leavellion people still still live in extreme poverty. To make that dream a reality, we are using powerful financial tools, the tools of the rich. Rich people use these tools every day to make themselves more wealthy. We are using these tools on behalf of the poor. We have always innovated the swap where parties Exchange Cash flows to achieve positions that are more in line with their risk profile. We invented the swap. We use swaps to mitigate currency risk and Interest Rate risk and we are developing new derivative instruments to manage all kinds of risks such as commodity risk, disaster risk and even whether weather risk. As we use these tools of the rich, such as leverage swaps, derivatives and insurance, we are trying to create new ones, every day that specifically are focused on serving the poor. After i became president , i asked a simple question. We see that our dream is a world free of poverty, but why dont we put a deadline on that dream . We adopted two goals in the spring of 2013. That is to end extreme property by poverty by 2030 and to boost shared prosperity, to boost the bottom incomes the bot the income of the bottom 40 of developing countries. This was an effort to directly address the question of inequality. I outlined the three ways we are working to get there. The first is to accelerate inclusive sustainable Economic Growth. The second is to build resilience to shocks and threats like Climate Change, pandemics and refugees. Finally, by investing more effectively in people. First pillar of the strategy is to accelerate inclusive sustainable Economic Growth. Spring, we called for a completely different approach so that we can maximize the amount of finance that countries could receive for the Development Purposes by systematically crowding in private sector investment. Everywhere we operate, we are asking a simple question. How can we maximize resources . What can we do to minimize public debt . We answer the question by trying to find winwin solutions. Countries utilize these resources to meet development goals. There has never been a better time to try to crowd in private sector investment. There is over 10 trillion sitting in negative Interest Rate bonds. For nonfinancial people, this means instead of giving your money to a bank and having them pay you interest, you give your money to a bank and you pay them to hold your money. That is what a negative Interest Rate bond is. The Japanese Central bank, European Central bank, german central bank, many of these banks have negative Interest Rate bonds. Lowher 24 trillion in very yielding government securities and 5 trillion in cash. Capitalhese holders of are waiting for higher returns and we think that we can create situations where they can get higher returns and we can achieve development goals. We feel that the only chance we have to meet the exploding aspirations of people over the world is to use these marketbased approaches to development. When it came time to replace replenish our ida fund. A 40 year loan is not a Sustainable Business proposition unless countries donate every three years. What we did at our last replenishment was we got a rating and now we can borrow from Capital Markets with the equity that sits in ida. To increase resources for africa and the poorest countries by 50 . The second pillar of our strategy is to build resilience to overlapping shocks in crises. Countries byg finding new ways to share risk with the capital market. I am a medical doctor and an anthropologist and i had not been trained in finance, but the last five years has