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. ILLUSTRATION: JAMAL KHURSHID
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 10th, 2013.
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we should learn to live by our size.. a beggar cant be chooser.. we are worlds perpetual beggar and comes under the top 5 failed states. I see no objection if others ignore us..
@meekal ahmed:
Meekal Ahmed ji, I have not see your column for some time. I really enjoy your commentary on economic affairs.
It seems that the writer and some of the commentators have no clue about these meetings or reasons for attendending the same. Making speeches is not the most important outcome, a lot of tasks are achieved in side meetings. The presence of key officials of a country there is a positive statement about inclusion of our country in the community of nations. In case of Pakistan it is perfectly ok to send key people there, and criticism can only be justified if a large contingent was going.
What a tantrum! Are we in high school! so what if x, y, z countries are making a speech. So what if so and so are not available to moderate! Seriously, in Pakistan people can take offence at anything.
Shahbaz,
Having experienced the torture of many Annual Meetings, I don't know whether your facts are correct or not and things might have changed so you could be right and I could be wrong.
Yes, we would have to write the speech for the Leader of the Delegation because the Ministry of Finance and/or State Bank could not write a half-decent speech.
But, generally-speaking, Pakistan is not prominent by its presence. The Pakistan delegation has not the slightest interest in global economic issues and, in any event, they don't have a clue.
Of course they will supplicate themselves in front of State Department and Treasury, and have meetings with key members of the Board --- China and Saudi, for example. And they will meet IMF and WB staff and maybe the DMD of the IMF but not the MD since they already met her in New York.
To my mind, I don't know why we even send any delegation. Just ask the Economic Minister in the Embassy to represent us. He probably does not have a clue about anything either, so what do we have to loose?
Why this incompetent Governor of State Bank of Pakistan is being asked to participate in those meetings when he has caused tremendous loss to nation by lying in the past. He must be fired and tried for damage that he has caused to the nation.