50 Years Is Enough Network staff received a phone call this morning from Alan Beattie of the Financial Times, probably the journalist with the deepest "inside" contacts at the IMF and WB these days. He said that it looks like the meetings that had been scheduled for Sept. 29-30 but which were postponed are now being rescheduled -- "probably in November" and "probably in North America."
These meetings would be on the order of the usual spring meetings, which is to say just a convening of the most powerful committees rather than a huge meeting of all the finance ministers, etc., as usually happens in the fall. That means about 100 delegates or so, rather than thousands.
Below is Beattie's story from the FT website. We will keep you posted.
The International Monetary Fund and World Bank are finalising plans to call meetings of their powerful policy-making committees within two months. The meetings were postponed after the September 11 attacks.
The international monetary and financial committee (IMFC) and the development committee, which meet twice a year to hold the institutions to account, are likely to meet next month. The plans reflect a determination that the terrorist attacks should not be allowed to interfere with international policy-making.
A spokesman for Gordon Brown, the UK chancellor who currently chairs the IMFC, said: "The chancellor believes that the meetings should take place as soon as possible. This would show that the work of the international financial community will not be disrupted by terrorism." He said it would also allow the IMFC and development committee to discuss terrorist financing, as well as ways to soften the impact on the global economic slowdown on the poorest countries.
The location for the meetings has not yet been finalised, though some officials suggested that they might break tradition and convene outside the US. Officials emphasised that the meetings would not be the full annual meetings of the IMF and World Bank, at which all 183 member countries are invited to speak at formal plenary sessions and which have attracted criticism for their size and formality.
The IMFC and development committees comprise 24 "governors" - finance and development ministers from member countries. The large industrialised countries have a representative each, while groups of smaller countries are represented by a single governor.
The committees, which review the IMF and World Bank's activities and help set priorities for them over the coming year, were due to meet at the end of September as part of the week-long annual meetings of the two institutions. The meetings - which were expected to be surrounded by anti-globalisation protesters - were cancelled after the September 11 attacks.