World Bank’s Ajay Banga vows to quintuple critical minerals financing in five years, cites $112bn private mobilisation

World Bank President Ajay Banga told a Washington audience that the institution aims to expand its critical minerals business fivefold over the coming five years.

In remarks carried by IANS, Banga placed that pledge at the centre of a wider account of private capital mobilisation by the World Bank Group and said the initiative would involve partnership with a set of countries the institution has identified. Banga said the World Bank had identified 20 countries as potential partners for the critical minerals drive.

Banga described a sharp rise in private finance flowing through the World Bank Group. He said private capital mobilisation rose threefold from about $35 billion in fiscal 2022 to $112 billion last year, and that when combined with the group's own financing total financing exceeded $230 billion.

He also said investors from 110 countries provided capital last year, and that the United States, the United Kingdom and India led those investment flows. The president drew attention to a persistent shortfall in commercial investment for the world's poorest economies, saying private capital mobilisation in low-income countries remained around $3 billion.

That figure, Banga said, highlights the continuing difficulty of attracting private funds to low-income countries even as overall mobilisation grows. Banga framed the critical minerals expansion as part of the World Bank's broader effort to marshal public and private resources for development projects.

The IANS report quotes him noting the scale of recent mobilisation and linking the critical minerals plan to the institution's wider financing strategy. He also told the audience that "the jobs gap is a projection," language the report records without further elaboration.

The single-source reporting limits public detail on the mechanics of the critical minerals programme in this account: the IANS text reports the five-year quintuple goal, the 20 potential partner countries and the mobilisation figures, but it does not list which countries will be partners, the precise financing instruments to be used, or how the programme will be governed.

The IANS article is reflected in headlines from Euronext, CNA, Reuters and MarketScreener that likewise summarise Banga's stated five-year target.

For now, the World Bank's stated ambitions rest on Banga's public remarks and the mobilisation figures he presented; the IANS account supplies the figures and the institution-level goals but does not supply additional documentation or a detailed timetable for implementation.