Without an agenda: Pakistan to not lead any WB or IMF annual events

Finance minister and SBP governor fly to Washington to attend annual meetings.

ISLAMABAD:

Finance Minister Ishaq Dar is in the United States to attend the annual meetings of the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and the World Bank Group (WBG) in Washington.

Dar and Governor State Bank of Pakistan (SBP) Yaseen Anwar will not feature as speakers in any of the seminars, regional briefings, press conferences, or any other events focused on the global economy, international development, and the world’s financial system, according to the agenda of the annual meetings, while finance ministers of Zambia, Yemen, Afghanistan, Nepal, Ethiopia, and Governor Reserve Bank of India Rajan Raguram, will be featuring as key note speakers and panelists in many important events.

The annual meetings of the WBG and the IMF each year bring together central bankers, ministers of finance and development, private sector executives, and academics to discuss issues of global concern.



On the sidelines of the annual meeting, addresses to leading think-tanks of the US have remained an important feature for previous Pakistani finance ministers. Senator Dar will address the Atlantic Council, a Washington-based think-tank, on challenges facing the Pakistani economy. Unfortunately however, the Director of South Asia Chair of the Atlantic Council, Shuja Nawaz, will not lead the session.

That responsibility has been assigned to Dr Bharath Gopalaswamy, the deputy director of the South Asian Center of the Atlantic Council, who will moderate the session, according to the Council’s website.

In the ‘Group of 24’ meetings, Pakistan will be represented by Algeria, which leads the constituency of the group of countries. Similarly, in the International Monetary and Financial Committee (IMFC) meeting Pakistan will be represented by Morocco.

The Pakistani finance minister will also not have the opportunity to deliver a speech at a meeting of Board of Governors of the WBG and the IMF. The practice of delivering speeches by finance ministers was disbanded three years back. Those who wish to deliver a speech can now submit a recorded one that the IMF uploads on its website, according to a former Pakistani diplomat.

But the spokesperson for the Finance Ministry, Rana Assad Amin, defended the visit and said that on the sidelines of the annual meetings, Dar will hold about 40 meetings with important personalities.

Even before Dar, global leaders had started ignoring Pakistan, according to a former Pakistani official who has in the past attended these meetings. The finance ministers of Japan and Germany had stopped meeting Pakistani leaders two years ago, he added. This time the finance ministers of Afghanistan and Iran will meet their Pakistani counterpart.

Even in seminars that have been organised to discuss topics such as emerging markets, Pakistani economic wizards will not feature as panelists. They will instead be led by officials from the WB. In a seminar on ‘What Will It Take to Achieve Both Healthy Children and Healthy Economies’, Nepal’s Finance Minister Shanker Prasad Koirala, and Minister of Finance for Afghanistan Omar Zakhilwal, will be key speakers.

The only positive outcome from the annual meetings is holding discussions with the US treasury officials on the sidelines, according to the officials. There is a possibility of such a meeting but this time the meeting with treasury officials will be overshadowed by the ongoing partial shutdown of the US government.

The IMF bears travel and daily expenditures for the finance minister and the secretary Economic Affairs Division for only three days.

Published in The Express Tribune, October 10^th, 2013.

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