Statement Delivered by Dr. Mahmoud Mohieldin, IMF Executive Director for Bahrain, Egypt, Iraq, Jordan, Kuwait, Lebanon, Maldives, Oman, Qatar, United Arab Emirates, Yemen
V20 MINISTERIAL DIALOGUE XII
16 April 2024
Washington D.C., USA
Dr. Mahmoud Mohieldin, IMF Executive Director
Thank you so much, Honorable Chair. I appreciate your leadership. As you refer to me as representative of Yemen, I have as well the honor of representing other countries belonging to the V20 including Lebanon, Jordan and the Maldives.
I just like to speak briefly, have well-prepared notes that I will not use and then share them for reference. I think the starting point should be the state of net capital flows to our group as part of the developing economies and emerging markets.
During the last few days, there are updates, reflected in full details based on the statistics coming from the World Bank, summarized well as well by a recent speech by the Under Secretary of the U.S. Treasury to the Peterson Institute, and yesterday by Professor Singh, and Larry Summers. Our group, developing economies and emerging markets, are with negative net capital flows today, and this needs to change. And the phrase of billions to trillions that my team when I was working at the Bank is very much responsible for coining, now is becoming as mentioned by Summers and Singh, it’s millions in, billions out.
I think we are now in a need for innovation, bold decisions, and as mentioned by the Minister of Pakistan and others that there is a great deal of knowledge that could be shared. The suffering of Pakistan resulted in the establishment of the Loss and Damage Fund in Sharm El-Sheikh and the operationalization of the Loss and Damage in Dubai. There are many innovative solutions coming through swaps, as we have seen from Barbados, Seychelles, and others. Bridgetown Initiative is an example as well of a bold initiative, not just for this group, but for the global sustainable development system. Bangladesh is providing an excellent example of how to use the Resilience and Sustainability Trust Fund and leveraging it through collaboration with the World Bank, IFC, the Asian Development Bank and the Green Climate Fund.
Finally, on the points related to bonds, I’ve seen the frequent reference to bonds of different colors, green, blue, and others. I think it’s not fair to our people and our countries to finance climate, especially adaptation, through more indebtedness. Think guarantees, grants and other innovative ways, including debt swaps, could be mobilized better in order to minimize the dependence on that.
I’m happy to work with His Excellency, the Secretary General and his team for his proposals to collaborate better with the IMF in the future.
Thank you.
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