A Preview of the World Bank/IMF and World Trade Organization Meetings

This year’s World Bank and International Monetary Fund (IMF) meeting, to be held Sept. 20-22 in Dubai, focuses on the challenges and opportunities in achieving regional and global prosperity. These questions are particularly timely as the international financial institutions face the task of rebuilding Iraq and eradicating extreme poverty and hunger by the year 2015.

A panel of Brookings experts will preview the World Bank/IMF meeting as well as the fifth World Trade Organization ministerial conference in Cancun. Several of the participants are the authors of recent books on international economic governance (Ralph Bryant), restructuring sovereign debt (Lex Rieffel), and foreign aid and the Millennium Challenge Account (Lael Brainard and Carol Graham).

This press briefing will address a host of policy issues, including:

• Foreign aid, the Millennium Challenge Account, and the challenges of coordinating donor efforts
• International economic governance and cross-border finance
• The international financial institutions and proposed sovereign debt restructuring mechanisms
• Relations between the IMF and Argentina
• Obstacles for the international financial institutions in financing Iraq’s reconstruction
• The 2004 World Development Report on “Making Services Work For Poor People” and the corresponding Millennium Development Goals