WEEKLY ROUND-UP
"We need to be very watchful about what is happening with inflation," IMF Managing Director Kristalina Georgieva said this week on CNBC's "Closing Bell." She said supply and demand mismatches combined with supply-side disruption is putting upward pressure on prices. "We expect this pressure to continue all the way until mid-next year, maybe all the way to end of 2022," she said in a wide-ranging interview that also discussed climate change and carbon taxes.
“There are opportunities to move the region from being a corridor to a platform in terms of trade and the global value chain,” Jihad Azour, Director, Middle East and Central Asia Department, said in a panel discussion this week on the outlook for the Caucasus and Central Asia. The event on the IMF's recently released Regional Economic Outlook for the Caucasus and Central Asia featured Martin Galstyan, Governor of the Central Bank of Armenia; Murat Koshenov, Deputy Chairman, Halyk Bank; and Johannes F. Linn, Non-Resident Senior Fellow, Brookings Institution. The panel covered everything from policies to accelerate growth and safeguard financial stability to the forces that could undermine the fragile recovery. Watch the Discussion
Raphael Espinoza of the IMF’s Fiscal Affairs Department presented key findings of the latest Fiscal Monitor at an October 28 seminar organized by the Centre for Policy Research and the Graduate Institute of Geneva. Espinoza says that the debt accumulated by countries during the pandemic has created difficult policy tradeoffs. But these tradeoffs are easier to manage when countries have sound public finances, with a credible set of rules and institutions to guide them. The seminar was moderated by CEPR’s Beatrice Weder di Mauro and also featured Giancarlo Corsetti of the University of Cambridge. Watch the event.
IMF Deputy Managing Director Antoinette M. Sayeh chaired a Capacity Development Dialogue with about 20 development partners of the IMF on October 28, focusing on how to regain momentum towards the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), foster an inclusive recovery, strengthen resilience, and build a sustainable foundation for long-term growth. Vitor Gaspar, Director of the Fiscal Affairs Department; Rhoda Weeks-Brown, General Counsel and Director of the Legal Department; and Roger Nord, Deputy Director of the Institute for Capacity Development, also joined the event. Get a longer recap here.
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MARK YOUR CALENDARS
The International Monetary Fund will hold its 22nd Jacques Polak Annual Research Conference virtually on November 4-5, 2021. The conference will focus on strategies to bring about a resilient recovery by boosting growth and reducing inequality across and within countries. Some highlights include a conversation between IMF Chief Economist Gita Gopinath and Raghuram Rajan of the University of Chicago on vaccines and divergence and the Mundell-Fleming Lecture by Pierre-Olivier Gourinchas of the University of California-Berkley.
The IMF is hosting a high-level panel discussion on Friday, November 5 at 8 a.m. ET on tax avoidance in sub-Saharan Africa’s mining sector. The event, moderated by IMF Deputy Managing Director Antoinette M. Sayeh, will feature Ipumbu Shiimi, Minister of Finance of Namibia; Lassané Kaboré, Minister of Economy, Finance and Development of Burkina Faso; Tom Butler, former CEO of the International Council on Mining and Metals; and Léonce Ndikumana, a member of the Independent Commission for the Reform of International Taxation. The panel will discuss the importance of mining in sub-Saharan Africa, the role of multinational enterprises (MNEs), and how mining needs to contribute to financing public spending and economic recovery. The panel will also examine new evidence from an IMF departmental paper. Watch the event live.
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