Bulletin

Pressing Issues of Globalization and Poverty Reduction Are Focus of 2000 IMF-World Bank Annual Meetings

Prague, the capital of the Czech Republic, one of the countries that has made strong progress in the transition to a market economy, was the appropriate setting for the 2000 Annual Meetings of the IMF and the World Bank. The meetings, which were held on September 26-28, were chaired by Trevor Manuel, the South African Finance Minister. Their main focus was on the urgent need to extend more widely the benefits of globalization. Speakers noted that while conditions in the global economy are encouraging and prospects for growth are generally favorable, poverty continues to be the single greatest challenge for the international community.

The plight of the poorest countries was emphasized by Czech President Vaclav Havel in his opening speech. Such poverty is one of the most visible manifestations of our contradictory civilization, he emphasized. He called on his audience "to also think about another restructuring-a restructuring of the entire system of values that forms the basis of our civilization today."

The tone for much of the discussion that followed in the plenary sessions was set by IMF Managing Director Horst Köhler in his opening address to his first Annual Meetings. He outlined his vision for the future of the IMF as "an active part of the workforce to make globalization work for the benefit of all." (For excerpts from Köhler's address, see below).

The Managing Director's vision of the future of the IMF was endorsed by the International Monetary and Financial Committee (IMFC), which met immediately ahead of the formal opening of the meetings. The IMFC urged the world community to place renewed emphasis on promoting broadly shared prosperity, sustained growth, and poverty reduction. It emphasized that the IMF, together with the World Bank, is uniquely placed to share in this effort.

A similar note was struck at the meeting of the joint World Bank- IMF Development Committee, which emphasized the concern that debt relief should lead to poverty reduction and economic development. This committee called on the IMF and the World Bank to make every effort to bring 20 countries to the decision point under the Heavily Indebted Poor Countries (HIPC) initiative by the end of this year. This is expected to result in combined debt-service relief of more than $30 billion. Together with traditional debt-relief mechanisms, a total of about $50 billion will be provided to these countries.

Governors representing the 182 member countries of the IMF spoke during the plenary sessions of the meetings. In addition to the dominant message of...