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The World Bank has given bonuses to senior officials as it pursues a cost-cutting restructuring, raising employees' concerns about management demands on them for belt-tightening, documents showed.
"We question the timing of such payments given the sacrifices the rest of us are being asked to make," the Bank's staff association said in an internal memo obtained yesterday by AFP.
A person close to the institution said that at least four senior officials based at the World Bank's headquarters in Washington have received the bonus, called a "scarce skills premium," for fiscal year 2014.
A key figure involved in the Bank restructuring, chief financial officer Bertrand Badre, received a $94,000 bonus for fiscal year 2014, in addition to his net annual salary of about $380,000, Bank spokesman David Theis confirmed.
The World Bank did not reveal the identities of other bonus beneficiaries. Badre was not immediately available to comment.
"The World Bank needs to attract and retain senior management of high caliber, and on rare occasions we extend a 'scarce skills premium' for highly technical or key managerial positions," Theis said.
According to the spokesman, Badre, a French national who left his job as CFO of French bank Societe Generale to join the World Bank as finance managing director and CFO in March 2013, "has deep management experience in some of the largest financial institutions in Europe."
Under his leadership, "we have been able to nearly double our financial firepower. This increased financial flexibility will allow us to help meet some of the great and pressing needs in the developing world."
The revelation of the bonuses comes at a critical moment for the World Bank, which is facing lending competition from the BRICS major emerging-market economies -- Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa -- and the private sector.
Under the leadership of World Bank President Jim Yong Kim, the development lender has undertaken a vast restructuring and reform program aimed at boosting resources to increase its lending capacity, as it strives to eliminate extreme poverty by 2030.
As part of the overhaul, the Bank intends to slash $400 million in spending over the next three years, on a total USD 5 billion budget.
