Abhas Jha, Indian economist appointed to key World Bank post in South Asia

Abhas Jha is appointed as World Bank's Practice Manager for Urban Development, Climatic Change and Disaster Risk Management (East Asia and the Pacific) for the World Bank.

With cyclone Amphan drastically hitting West Bengal, Orissa in India and Bangladesh, Abhas Jha's appointment comes at a time when the world is combating Covid-19 crisis and climatic change.

Abhas Jha works on cities, infrastructure finance and economics, risk and resilience, and public policy. He leads operations and strategy, technical quality control, risk management and advisory services for the Bank.

Jha joined the World Bank in 2001 as the Executive Director for Bangladesh, Bhutan, India and Sri Lanka and has since worked in Latin America and the Caribbean, Europe and Central Asia, and East Asia and the Pacific regions. This announcement was made by the World Bank on May 22, 2020.

The World Bank speaks on Jha's key role

According to a statement from the Bank on Jha's appointment, the World Bank aims to conceive and deliver innovative and high-quality development solutions to respond to client demands and strengthen disaster risk management and climate action in the region Jha will be based out of Singapore, working closely with global leads and other practice managers to incubate, pilot and scale-up innovative and high-quality development solutions, to promote the flow of global knowledge to serve countries in South Asia.

Jha's key responsibilities will be to nurture, encourage, lead, inspire and deploy a team of highly qualified professionals to deliver the best solutions to help the South Asia region (SAR) Disaster Risk Management and Climate Change team to connect and collaborate across Global Practice boundaries.

The regions Jha will cover under the World Bank's practise group are India, Bangladesh, Pakistan, Afghanistan, Sri Lanka, Nepal and Maldives. His most recent assignment is Practice Manager for Urban Development and Disaster Risk Management in the East Asia and Pacific region.

Jha's early formative years in his career

Prior to joining World Bank, Jha served for 12 years as a member of the Indian Administrative Service (the national senior civil service of India) in the Government of India (in the Federal Ministry of Finance and earlier in the state of Bihar).

Abhas Jha is also the lead author of "Safer Homes, Stronger Communities: A Handbook for Reconstructing after Disasters" (2010) and "Cities and Flooding: A Guide to Integrated Urban Flood Risk Management" (2012) and has edited/co-edited or contributed chapters to several other publications.

Also another American economist Carmen Reinhart was recently appointed as the new Vice President and Chief Economist of the World Bank Group. Reinhart is a PhD from Columbia University, currently serving as the Minos A. Zombanakis Professor of the International Financial System at Harvard Kennedy School. Earlier, she was the Dennis Weatherstone Senior Fellow at the Peterson Institute for International Economics and Professor of Economics and Director of the Center for International Economics at the University of Maryland.