OREANDA-NEWS. October 06, 2015. World Bank and International Monetary Fund Annual and Spring Meetings bring each year together central bankers, ministers of finance, Heads of DFIs and private sector stakeholders to discuss current issues that are of relevance to the world economy, financial stability, and economic development. The Annual Meetings will be taking place this year from October 9-11 in Lima, Peru.

The Annual Meetings will be an opportunity for African Development Bank President Akinwumi Adesina and other senior staff to reaffirm AfDB’s support for collaborating with other MBDs on the “Billions to Trillions” agenda, and to engage with the WB/IMF Governors, Ministers of Finance, private sector and other partners. The Heads of MDBs will be also discussing one of the action items made during the Financing for Development Conference in Addis Ababa in July 2015 to examine their role, scale and functioning to enable them to adapt to and be fully responsive to the sustainable development agenda.

The World Bank-IMF Annual Meetings will include a day of plenary sessions with WB/IMF Governors and a programme of seminars. The Meetings provide opportunities for consultations between the officials from the Member Countries, MDB Heads and other relevant stakeholders. In addition to the meetings of the Boards of Governors, the Development Committee and the International Monetary and Financial Committee (IMFC) are convened, that advise the Board of Governors of the WB and the IMF.  

AfDB’s overarching goal for its participation in the World Bank IMF Annual Meetings is to strengthen the alliances within the areas of the new corporate priorities, and to position the Bank as a key player by leveraging resources to support the African countries in implementation of SDGs.

While there is clear recognition of the Bank’s advantages and its legitimacy within Africa, the changes in the global environment require the Bank to evolve and adapt to remain relevant and to support Africa’s transformation. In order to do so, it must revisit its business model to generate more leverage from its limited financial resources along with other MDBs. 

The AfDB delegation will take an active role in following up on the discussions that took place during the United Nations Sustainable Development Summit in New York and seek to broaden the dialogue on the new corporate priorities (the President’s High 5s), including the New Deal for Energy in Africa.

The AfDB stands ready to scale-up the partnership with our peers, governments, private sector and other partners, and put our finance and expertise at work to support the implementation of the new development agenda. AfDB will also use this opportunity to pave the way for a consensus as a lead up to the COP21 Summit taking place from November 30 to December 11, 2015 in Paris.