Seán Ryan
Ceist:48 Mr. S. Ryan asked the Minister for Finance if he will make a statement on the recent meeting of the IMF in Prague, Czech Republic. [23481/00]
Written Answers. - Ministerial Meetings.
The meeting referred to is in fact the annual meetings of both the IMF and the World Bank group.
The meetings provide a focal point for discussing current issues relevant to the work of these institutions and also serve, along with the spring meetings, as a means of injecting further political direction into the work of the institutions in the coming year. They also give an opportunity to assess progress since the last such meetings.
This year's meetings, despite being the object of street protests, in some cases violent, did register substantial progress in advancing the work of the institutions. In the case of both institutions there was a greater willingness to engage both with civil society and with each other.
The IMF covered the world economic outlook with a particular emphasis on the progress of the transition economies one decade into the process. It stressed its central role in strengthening the international financial system to assist all countries in benefiting from globalisation. It also undertook to review its conditionality, including paying due respect to members' specific circumstances and their implementation capacities. It reviewed the current financial architecture and its own role in preventing and resolving crises and welcomed the establishment of an independent evaluation office which should lead to improving its future operations and enhance its accountability.
The World Bank stressed its role in the ongoing effort to reduce poverty and to harness globalisation to the benefit of all. It laid particular stress on the area of global public goods where its own comparative advantage lies, for example, in supporting actions to mitigate disease, protect the environment and encourage the sharing of knowledge relevant to development, all on a world or global scale. It also addressed the effectiveness of development and development aid through a greater co-ordination of efforts both globally and by the range of agents within individual countries.
Both institutions laid particular stress on the need to accelerate debt relief, while acknowledging that this was one of a number of ingredients in the development mix. In my own contribution, I laid particular stress on the need for a faster and more flexible implementation of the debt initiative. In this context I supported the call by Canadian Finance Minister Martin for an immediate moratorium by bilateral creditors on debt payments from eligible reforming HIPC countries. I also drew attention to the need to identify and address emerging anomalies under the initiative and to ensure that the initiative is adequately financed.
I also drew attention to Ireland's recent commitment to achieving the UN development aid target of 0.7% of GNP by 2007. I supported the evolving role of the institutions in ensuring a poverty focus on their activities and welcomed the significant increase in the transparency of their operations for which many of us have been calling for some time. On balance I feel that these were successful meetings and that useful progress was made.
The following references may be of further interest to the Deputy.
The IMF meetings website either provides directly, or has links to, much of the background documentation for the meetings along with the interventions of the participants.
http://www.imf.org/external/am/2000/ pressrel.htm
The communiques of both the policy committees which preceded the plenary meetings can be accessed for the International Monetary and Financial Committee of the IMF at
http://www.imf.org/external/np/cm/2000/ 092400.htm and for the joint IMF/World Bank Development Committee at
http://www.worldbank.org/html/dec/annual/ communiq.htm
The interventions by the Canadian Finance Minister, who represents Ireland at these committees, can be found at the Canadian Finance Department's site
http://www.fin.gc.ca/newse00/00-072e.html
http://www.fin.gc.ca/newse00/00-074e.html
My intervention can be found at
http://www.imf.org/external/am/2000/speeches/ PR45IEE.pdf
The EU Presidency address, referred to in my intervention, can be found at:
http://www.imf.org/external/am/2000/imfc/ eng/eu.htm
The World Economic Outlook can be found at: ttp://www.imf.org/external/pubs/ft/weo/2000/02/ index.htm
Question No. 49 taken with Question No. 9.