WBG Resident Representative, Guyana and Suriname, Georgetown, Guyana

## WBG Resident Representative, Guyana and Suriname, Georgetown, Guyana - Organization:World Bank Group - Office:The World Bank in Georgetown WBG Resident Representative, Guyana and Suriname Organization: World Bank Group Term Duration: Open-Ended Staff (OPEN-OP) Recruitment Type: International Recruitment Location: Georgetown,Guyana Required Language(s): English Preferred Language(s): Closing Date: 10/9/2026 (MM/DD/YYYY) at 11:59pm UTC At theWorld Bank Group (WBG), you'll join a diverse, global community working across cultures, disciplines, and borders to address the world's most pressing development challenges. With 1.2 billion young people reaching working age in the decade ahead, the challenge of job creation has never been greater. Through partnerships across 145 countries and more than 182 offices worldwide, we work with governments, private sector, development partners and other stakeholders to invest in people, strengthen markets, and deliver scalable, data-driven solutions that generate more and better jobs and improve lives. For more information, visit www.worldbank.org Background:To address country development needs and global challenges with impact and at scale, IBRD/IDA, IFC and MIGA are increasingly working as One World Bank Group through purposeful collaboration, coordination, and deployment of our collective knowledge and services. Through this approach, we aim to streamline and simplify our country engagement, allowing countries to better leverage the comparative advantages of each WBG institution and access solutions that maximize the respective strengths of the public and private sectors. A critical role in delivering on this approach is the new joint Resident Representative role that is being established in several countries to represent the WBG in relationships with the government, private sector clients, and key partners and oversee the operations, investments, and programs of all WBG institutions in the country. The WBG is seeking a joint Resident Representative for Guyana and Suriname based in Georgetown, Guyana. The Resident Representative reports to the IBRD Division Director for the Caribbean and Haiti with a dotted line to the Trinidad WBG Country Manager and the IFC Regional Director for CCM-Central America & the Caribbean and serves as a member of the IBRD and IFC regional management teams. VPU Context: The World Bank Group serves 33 client countries in Latin America and the Caribbean Region (LCR). Clients range from large rapidly growing sophisticated middle-income clients to IDA countries to small Caribbean states to one fragile state, and to varying degrees face three key challenges - low productivity and growth, low quality jobs and low resilience to shocks. The region is tackling these challenges with a strong WBG approach, underpinned by selectivity and complementarity between the value added of public and private arms, and in strong partnership with relevant regional development partners. A. The challenge of low growth. After recovering lost output, the region is returning to pre-pandemic low growth and productivity scenario. After a solid post-pandemic rebound in economic activity (7.2% and 3.9% growth in 2021 and 2022 respectively), GDP growth returned to the pre-pandemic low growth around 2.2% in 2023 and 2024, with a medium-term outlook of 2.5%. With an average Gini co-efficient of [0.52] LAC remains also one of the most unequal regions in the world. It is a region where the bottom 50% earn 27 times less than the top 10%. It also represents stark differences in opportunity, a child born today in the poorest 20% quintile in LAC will on average be 17 percentage points less productive than a child born in the richest 20%. B. The challenge of quality jobs: the need for better quality jobs is paramount, with 6.2% unemployment rates, these low levels mask a deeper issue of job quality. Reflecting stagnating living standards, labor earnings have only grown by 1% or less per year in most countries over the past decade, and some 19% of workers in the region are earning incomes below the poverty line. - Investing in foundational infrastructure critical to job creation, LAC needs to invest at least 3.1% of GDP in infrastructure investments per year, yet it only invests 2%, which is significantly lower than the world average of 5.4% of GDP. This underinvestment in physical infrastructure, including in key infrastructure sectors (including resilient transport, water, energy etc.) is holding back potential for better jobs. The region is supporting clients by supporting selective transformative infrastructure projects (e.g. urban mobility, regional transport and connectivity). On human infrastructure challenge, firms in the region continue to cite skills shortages (55% of firms in LAC vs 45% in MIC regions) as a key barrier to growth and job creation. A child born in LAC is expected to reach only 56 percent of their productive potential. Three out of four 15-year olds fail basic math proficiency and cannot read adequately the soft side involves supporting clients revamp their education and health sectors. The region is supporting clients to revamp their education and health care sectors. - The LAC region also needs to foster a predictable, business-enabling policy and regulatory environment. These include ensuring macro stability, eliminating restrictive business regulations in product and factor markets, and improving access to finance, especially long-term capital. Labor market regulations in LAC are noted to be on par with the most restrictive labor market regimes among OECD countries. Further, enforcement of competition policy needs to be supported due to high levels of market concentration in LAC markets: the 50 largest firms in Mexico, Brazil, Colombia, Argentina, Chile have revenues greater than 30% of GDP. At 55% of GDP, domestic credit to the private sector remains much lower than EAP (178%). - Private capital needs to be appropriately incentivized to support the provision of public goods and investments in key sectors, especially those that have the highest potential to enable and/or create better quality jobs. However, at only 19.8% of GDP, gross capital formation remains lowest among all regions (EAP is at 38% and South Asia at 30%). Private capital mobilization in the region is being held back by shallow capital markets, lack of long-term finance, high cost of capital, regulatory and institutional barriers (including in PPP frameworks). Based on country contexts, the WBG will support investments in productive clusters (energy/mining, value added manufacturing, agribusiness, tourism, etc) across the public-private spectrum. The challenge of vulnerability to shocks. Building resilience of the countries to shocks, including natural disasters, through contingent financing and other innovative risk management platforms at country and regional levels is critical given the high exposure to climate-related disasters and natural hazards. The Central America and the Caribbean have recurrent hurricanes that have impacts on GDP significantly higher than the regional average of 1.7%. Several countries are experiencing deep, long droughts, increasingly intense storms, and floods that disrupt economic activities and affect livelihoods, with impacts on the most vulnerable populations. Unit Context:The Caribbean Country Management Unit (LC3 CMU) covers 17 countries, with a total population of about 19 million people. The CMU and key staff, including the Country Director and Operations Manager, are based in Kingston, Jamaica. Additionally, the CMU has Country Offices in Port-au-Prince, Haiti, Sint Maarten, Guyana and Barbados. A Caribbean CMU anchor unit represents the CMU in Washington, D.C. and supports the overall work program. In collaboration with Global Practice Groups, the LC3 CMU supports the development priorities of Caribbean countries through financing (IDA, IBRD, trust fund) and knowledge services and also provid