World Bank President James Wolfensohn said he expects to leave his job after his term expires in June.

　　"I've had 10 years, and I think that's probably enough," Wolfensohn, 71, said on ABC's "This Week" show on Sunday. "But if the need is there, I'll do whatever the shareholders want. My understanding and my belief is that probably during the course of this year, I'll give over to someone else."

　　US President George W. Bush is likely to push ahead with plans this year to narrow the focus of the World Bank, analysts said, returning the international lending institution to its roots of primarily financing large infrastructure projects and doing away with the practice of handing out zero-interest loans.

　　The lender, the largest financier of projects in developing nations, broadened its scope under Wolfensohn, who sought a more "humanizing" role for the bank. Since taking over in 1995, he cut by 40 percent financing for dams, bridges and infrastructure projects, and shifted that money to programs promoting climate change, faith-based initiatives and helping the disabled.

　　"The magnitude of the change was really very significant," said the bank's former Chief Economist Joseph Stiglitz, a 2001 Nobel Prize winner. "He saw development in human terms. It wasn't just a bank, it was the impact that the World Bank had on the lives of individuals."

　　Bush is seeking to scale back some of Wolfensohn's projects, overhaul the bank's US$20 billion a year lending operation and taper a roster of more than 10,000 employees scattered in 109 nations, Carnegie Mellon University economist Allan Meltzer said.

　　"The Wolfensohn era is over," said Meltzer, who led a congressional commission evaluating the bank's performance in 2000. "I don't think that his way of going about economic development fits with the Bush administration."

　　By tradition, the US president appoints the head of the World Bank, while the head of the bank's sister institution, the International Monetary Fund, is named by European officials.

　　Wolfensohn, whose second five-year term expires in June, said on September 24 that the outcome of the November US elections would likely determine if he would serve a third.

　　He followed up with reporters on December 22, saying he's yet to be asked by the United States to serve another term at the bank.

　　"I don't know anything about the third term," Wolfensohn said then. "There is very little likelihood that I will retire before the end of my term. The only question is will I stay for another 10 or 20 years after that. Someone has to ask me first."

　　World Bank lending for large-scale projects to build power plants, roads and other public works dropped to US$5.5 billion in 2002 from US$9.5 billion in 1993, according to the lender's Website, as Wolfensohn focused on more human-interest projects.

　　Critics such as Meltzer want the bank to get back to its roots of financing infrastructure, saying projects Wolfensohn has overseen have shown little, if any, returns for the bank.

　　Former Treasury Secretary Paul O'Neill said in an interview on November 9 that he'd like to see the World Bank create more tools to assess the effectiveness of its projects.

　　Kenneth Rogoff, who heads Harvard University's Center for International Development, said on October 14 that the bank should also stop lending and provide only grants. The bank's importance has diminished as the role of private lending in emerging market nations could reach US$229 billion this year, the highest since 1997, according to Institute for International Finance.

　　Supporters of Wolfensohn, including Stiglitz, said the bank leader's more "human" approach marked a change for the better.

　　Sebastian Mallaby, who wrote "The World's Banker," about Wolfensohn in 2004, said he's concerned that the push for grants combined with cutting lending to middle income countries may one day put the bank out of business.

　　"If we lost the World Bank, first of all we would lose a creator of public goods," Mallaby said.

　　The Bush administration wants to change the World Bank's practice of providing zero-interest loans over a period of 40 years and instead provide grants and have the lender provide greater disclosure over how lending decisions are made.

　　(Bloomberg News)