New Delhi: World Bank's Indian-origin chief Ajay Banga is in Pakistan, and it's personal this time
World Bank president Ajay Banga, a US citizen with Indian origins, on Tuesday visited his ancestral home in the Punjab province of Pakistan. Banga was born in Maharashtra in 1959 but traces his ancestry to this part of pre-1947 undivided India.
He is on a four-day high-level visit to Pakistan, which will conclude on Wednesday, comprised of professional and personal engagements. Walls of his ancestral village were filled with his posters, and locals gathered to watch “a son returning home”.
On Monday, Banga, among the most Sikh faces globally, also visited Gurdwara Sri Panja Sahib in Hasan Abdal, where he offered prayers. This shrine, associated with the first Sikh master Guru Nanak, is among the prominent ones that ended up in Pakistan even as most Sikhs migrated to India during Partition.
Banga and his wife were accompanied by Pakistan’s federal minister Muhammad Aurangzeb and provincial minister Ramesh Singh Arora, who is also the chief of the Pakistan Sikh Gurdwara Parbandhak Committee.
Banga was born in November 1959 in Khadki, a small town in Maharashtra. He did his graduation from Delhi’s St Stephen’s College and post-graduation from the Indian Institute of Management, Ahmedabad.
Before joining the World Bank Group, he served as vice-chairman at General Atlantic and earlier as president and chief executive of Mastercard. He became a naturalised US citizen in 2007.
Ramesh Singh Arora said Sikhs across the world, including in India, “share a bond of love” with Pakistan due to the presence of their sacred religious sites in the country.
On Sunday, Banga, accompanied by his spouse and senior officials, visited the Jaulian Buddhist archaeological site at Khanpur in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa.
His visit, on the professional side, included talks with senior government officials on ongoing projects and key policy issues, Pakistani state media reported on Sunday as he landed.
The visit comes at a time when Pakistan and the World Bank are gearing up to implement a 10-year partnership framework to grant $20 billion in loans to the cash-strapped nation. The World Bank’s lending for Pakistan, due to start this year, will focus on education quality, child stunting, climate resilience, energy efficiency, inclusive development and private investment, local channels reported.
State-run PTV said, “During his stay, he will meet Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif and other senior officials to discuss economic reforms, development projects, and key policy issues.”
Pakistan, which nearly defaulted on its foreign debt obligations in 2023, is currently making efforts to stabilise its economy under a $7-billion International Monetary Fund (IMF) program.
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