Reviewing state of global economy: Shaukat to represent Pakistan at IMF and World Bank moots

The two-day spring meetings of International Monetary Fund (IMF) and World Bank (WB) will be held on April 24 and 25, in Washington DC.
The basic agenda will include a review of the state of the global economy, status of crisis prevention and resolution efforts of the Fund, and will look at the state of multilateral efforts to attack poverty in the world's low-income countries, Thomas C. Dawson, director external relations IMF, said on Thursday.
Pakistan will be represented at the meetings by a delegation, which includes Finance Minister Shaukat Aziz and Governor State Bank Ishrat Husain, embassy sources said.
Shaukat Aziz will also hold meetings with the high officials of the world lending organisations, and meet his counterparts from friendly countries.
The Pakistan delegation is scheduled to arrive on April 21, and has a busy schedule of engagements.
According to Dawson, the last item will certainly be a theme that will carry through the April 24th meeting of the IMF's International Monetary and Financial Committee and the joint IMF-World Bank Development Committee, which is scheduled to meet on April 25.
He said a number of staff-prepared papers would also be published around the meetings.
"The papers are part of the supporting documents to the IMFC and Development Committee discussions, and I expect these documents will be available publicly on the Fund website during the weekend meetings, as well as, the transcripts of press briefings. And IMF will continue its Web stream in fact, there is a Web streaming of press events for public consumption."
The traditional press conference by African finance ministers will also be held.
During the spring sessions, Managing Director IMF, Mrs. Krueger will address a press conference and there will be the normal Saturday evening or late afternoon joint press conference with Gordon Brown wrapping up the IMFC meeting.
To a question on security, Dawson said certainly, with the history of demonstrations here and after events around the world, security is certainly a matter of concern whenever there was a meeting of this sort.
He said: "There is a very large demonstration planned for that weekend on a different subject, so the town is likely to be a bit crowded."
He disclosed that the Fund has been sponsoring a conference on the Middle East/North Africa region on challenges of growth and globalisation.
"And, to go over sort of the issues under review, discussion, et cetera, on the policies needed to accelerate growth rates in the region, particularly with a focus toward creating sufficient jobs given the burgeoning, expanding labour force in the region, how to better manage the integration of the region into the global economy."
"The conference itself consists of officials and experts from central banks, governments, academic institutions, as well as regional and international organisations, both from within and outside the region.
Once the meeting is over, which is halfway done now, a summary of the main themes of the press conference will be provided. This year is the 60th anniversary of the Fund.
CLOSER TO GOAL: "The Fund is now closer to the goal of its founders as being a universal institution. In the post-war period, we were not a universal institution because of divisions in the world, the Cold War and so on. We now are an institution of 184 member countries in which the member countries, who do have varying political systems, economic systems, are, in fact, all members of the institution. So I would say there is much more of a diversity in the institution than there was in the earlier stages. "The reference to market fundamentalism, as often made, is often popular rhetoric or sometimes also referred to as "neo-liberalism."
Dawson reminded people that the Fund is a governmental organisation. "Much of what we are doing is strengthening the effectiveness and role of governments in helping economies manage themselves."
"In some countries, some regions, we do hear that accusation, and in this particular country, we often hear the accusation that the Fund is, in fact, an agent of some sort of creeping public sector."
"So we get the criticism from both directions and that doesn't necessarily mean we are doing everything right, because we indeed are trying to be a learning institution to learn from mistakes that we have made and publicise our own self-assessments."
"Actually in a sense, the Fund is closer to its original mandate than it had been through many of the 60 years," he added.