Antonella Bassani

Antonella Bassani is the Vice President, Budget, Performance Review and Strategic Planning. She is responsible for consolidating the WB’s budget sustainability, ensuring effective alignment of budget with business needs and enhancing support to WBG programs. She has a blend of both operational knowledge and financial expertise from across the World Bank Group (WBG).

Prior to assuming her current role, she was the Director of Strategy and Operations for the Middle East and North Africa Region at the World Bank since April 2016 and the Director of Strategy and Operations for the East Asia and Pacific Region since April 2014. In these roles, she provided strategic leadership and support to regional teams in the delivery of high quality strategies, operations, flexible and innovative financing, and knowledge services. She promoted corporate, regional and global partnerships and priorities in service of the Bank’s goals of eliminating extreme poverty and boosting shared prosperity.

She was also Director of the IDA Resource Mobilization Department in the Concessional Finance and Global Partnership Vice-Presidency of the World Bank from February 2010. In that position, Ms. Bassani managed the process of negotiating the IDA 16 and 17 replenishments with donor and recipient governments ensuring adequate and growing resources for IDA and an operational and financial policy framework which support effective use of IDA resources.

Prior to that, she was the Sector Manager responsible for the Bank's programs on poverty reduction and economic management in fifteen countries in the West Africa Region. In previous assignments at the Bank, she was Lead Economist in the Latin American and Caribbean Region, Advisor to the Managing Director, and Senior Country Economist for Togo and Niger.

Ms. Bassani joined the World Bank through the Young Professional Program in 1993. Before joining the Bank, she worked at the OECD in Paris. She is an Italian national. She holds a Doctorate degree in International Economics and a Master’s Degree in International Affairs, both from the Johns Hopkins University.