IMF Board, UN ambassadors find common ground in Financing for Development effort Cooperative development effort

• Pages: 53-57

Page 53

In preparation for a UN-sponsored global meeting of policymakers to be held in early 2002, IMF Executive Board members met on February 6 with members of the UN Preparatory Committee for an informal and open exchange of views about the UN's Financing for Development effort (see box, page 56). The basis for the discussion, chaired by IMF Managing Director Horst Köhler, was UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan's policy report to the Preparatory Committee of proposals on all issues on the Financing for Development agenda. In its final form, this report, issued on January 30, will serve as a main contribution to the discussions during the 2002 meeting.

Role of international institutions

Köhler opened the discussions by noting that the IMF was part of the "workforce" committed to achieving the UN's goal of reducing poverty by half by 2015.

The question, Köhler said, was not whether the IMF had a role in this effort, but how best to implement it.

He suggested that the "comprehensive process" should be built on two main pillars: the responsibility of each country for its internal economic and political stability, particularly in such areas as governance, conflict, corruption, and mismanagement; and more and more efficient international support for poor countries, including better access to capital and goods markets, faster delivery of official development assistance, and better use of technical assistance.

Cochair of the Bureau for the Preparatory Committee Jørgen Bøjer, UN ambassador for Denmark, noted that the guiding principle behind the Financing for Development effort was to find a unified and comprehensivePage 56 approach to meeting the world's development financing needs through cooperation and coordination among the various international institutions. The idea was to capitalize on each institution's area of expertise while respecting the mandate of each.

As important as consensus is on what the Financing for Development effort should do, IMF Executive Director A. Shakour Shaalan said, agreement on what the effort should not do was equally important. It should not, for example, erode the mandate of existing international financial institutions; nor should it lead to a proliferation of forums and institutions that would only diffuse the effort.Most important, Shaalan said, quoting directly from the...