WASHINGTON: International Monetary Fund and World Bank officials are joining dozens of economic leaders for a two-day summit in Paris, aiming to tackle the interlinked challenges of poverty alleviation and climate change.
"Change is appropriate for the World Bank," Banga said."It isn't a symptom of failure or drift or irrelevance, it is a symptom of opportunity, life, and importance." The goal is to make progress on these reforms by the next annual meeting of the IMF and World Bank, which take place in October in Morocco.
The most significant breakthrough so far came at the IMF and World Bank spring meetings, when agreement was reached to boost the World Bank's lending capacity by up to US$5 billion per year for 10 years. Heading into the summit, there were hopes that progress could be made on a stalled two-year-old pledge by wealthier countries to recycle US$100 billion in IMF special drawing rights from rich countries to vulnerable economies.