Baah-Wiredu off to World Bank, IMF meetings

Thursday, April 10, 2008 (Daily Graphic Pg 57)

Story: Lucy Adoma Yeboah
THE Minister of Finance and Economic Planning, Mr Kwadwo Baah-Wiredu, has left Accra for Washington DC, United States to attend this year’s Commonwealth HIPC Finance Ministers Meeting.
He will also attend the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund (IMF) 2008 Spring meetings, scheduled between yesterday and April 13.
From Washington DC, the Finance Minister will continue to Copenhagen, Denmark to participate in an international conference on the gender aspect of the Millennium Development Goal (MDGs). It has the theme “The Gender Challenge - Economic Empowerment of Women”.
According to information gathered at the Ministry of Finance and Economic Planning in Accra, Mr Baah-Wiredu will also make a stop-over in London, where he is scheduled to brief a group of investors in the United Kingdom (UK) on April 18, 2008.
The meeting for the Commonwealth HIPC Finance Ministers is to enable the ministers to discuss a wide range of issues including the world economic situation; IMF and World Bank issues; multilateral debt; the political process and management of economic change.
The ministers are also expected to discuss how best to work towards strengthening greater economic co-operation among Commonwealth countries in trade, investment and development.
The Spring meetings of the IMF's Financial Committee and the joint World Bank-IMF Development Committee would also discuss progress on the work of the fund and bank.
This year, the meetings will include briefings on the Global Monitoring Report, which keeps track of the world's progress in implementing the policies and actions for achieving the MDGs; Latin America and the Caribbean (LAC) Remittances Report; the US slowdown and economic perspectives for Latin America and the World Development Indicators.
The Copenhagen conference on gender is being held at the invitation of the Danish Ministry for Development Co-operation and is meant to provide input to the international MDGs campaign to ensure a strong focus on the MDG 3 which promotes gender equality and empowerment of women.
“The expected outcome of the conference will be to define the main gender challenges and to identify what concrete commitment and actions need to be taken. The focus will be on both public and private sector initiatives.”
The Director of Sub-Saharan Publishers, Ms Akosua Ofori-Mensah, has also been invited to attend the gender conference.