A group of over 40 legislators from 30 countries attended a workshop with the World Bank and the IMF on the margins of the Spring Meetings. The workshop is jointly hosted by the two institutions and organized in cooperation with the Parliamentary Network on the World Bank and IMF. The parliamentarians were welcomed by Caroline Anstey, Managing Director of the World Bank, and Gerry Rice, External Affairs Director at the International Monetary Fund. The program of day 1 included briefings on the Bank’s new poverty targets (by World Bank Chief Economist Kaushik Basu); on the Bank’s work in Africa (by Vice President for Africa Makhtar Diop); and on the Bank’s work to address climate change through bold action (by experts in the Sustainable Development Department). Influential MPs from Finance; Foreign Policy; and Development Committees in key donor countries such as UK, the Netherlands, Sweden, Norway, Denmark, Belgium and Switzerland; large emerging countries such as Brazil, Mexico and Turkey, and important IDA countries like Burundi, Haiti, Malawi, South Sudan and Uganda were among those actively participating in the discussions.
