The 25-member World Bank board of member countries has grilled the United States nominee for the financial institution's presidency, Jim Yong Kim.
Kim, who was inetviewed today, was the last of the three candidates to be interviewed by the panel.
His opponents – Nigeria's Finance Minister, Dr. Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala and former Colombian finance minister, Jose Antonio Ocampo, had earlier been interviewed.
At the interview, Kim told the bank's board of directors that he would not hesitate to question the status quo and do his best to help the world's poorest.
In a two and a half page address made public by the Treasury Department, Kim outlined the reasons why he believed his training as a public health expert and former president of Dartmouth College equipped him with the skills needed to take over the World Bank in June when current president Robert Zoellick steps down.
"You would find in me someone who asks hard questions about the status quo and is not afraid to challenge existing orthodoxies," Kim said. "I'd bring rigor, objectivity and a focus on data that help all of us define and achieve our shared vision of securing strong economic growth and delivering greater opportunity for the world's poor," he said.
Meanwhile, Ocampo said on Wednesday in Washington D.C that the unprecedented challenge posed by developing countries to the U.S grip on the World Bank presidency would test industrial nations' commitment to an open selection process, Reuters reports.
Speaking at an event hosted by the Center for Global Development and the Washington Post, he said, "We are putting the industrial countries to account ... if they are really committed to an open, merit-based system."
Under an informal agreement, the World Bank has always been led by an American and the International Monetary Fund by a European since the founding of the institutions after World War Two.
He said each of the board directors asked between two to five questions, which focused mainly on his qualifications for the job.
The Punch