The Belgian Development Cooperation Team at the 2024 Annual Meetings of the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund

At the 2024 Annual Meetings of the World Bank Group and the International Monetary Fund in Washington D.C., the Belgian Development Cooperation Team is engaging with all stakeholders to make sure the institutions are ready to perform better and faster.

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At the 2024 Annual Meetings of the World Bank Group and the International Monetary Fund in Washington D.C., the Belgian Development Cooperation Team is engaging with all stakeholders to make sure the institutions are ready to perform better and faster.

This week, the 2024 Annual Meetings of the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and the World Bank Group took place in Washington, D.C.. This is the largest gathering of finance ministers, central bank governors and ministers for development in the world. For many partners from developing countries, it is a key opportunity to get support for the development of their countries and to grow in a sustainable way.

The Belgian Development Cooperation Team, composed of the Directorate-General for Development Cooperation and Humanitarian Aid, Belgium’s development agency Enabel and the Belgian Investment Company for Developing Countries (BIO), was present too. They took this opportunity to meet and discuss with influential leaders from government, business, international organisations, civil society, and academia.

For Belgium, the World Bank is a key partner of our development cooperation. As we celebrate the 80th anniversary of the World Bank, Belgium proactively supports the plans to reform the institution to be future-ready and respond to today’s challenges of fragility, climate change and getting back on track to achieve the Sustainable Development Goals (SDG).

We want to transform the World Bank Group and the multilateral development banks towards more effectiveness and efficiency. It is important that financial means are well spent and lead to better and faster results.

As Belgium has chosen to prioritise the most fragile and capacity-restraint countries in its development cooperation, a focus on these countries needs to drive the ongoing reform process of the World Bank. We want the International Development Association (IDA), the World Bank’s arm for low-income countries, to focus on the poorest and more vulnerable, and to support our key priorities such as health, education, and social protection.

In order to achieve these goals, we need to work together. The Belgian Development Cooperation Team is therefore building bridges, collaborating across institutions and fostering alliances with other stakeholders and partners across the globe.

The World Bank group is a preferred partner in many of the countries where Belgium’s development cooperation is concentrated. As such, we share knowledge, expertise and lessons learned with the Bank and other shareholders, to do better in the future.

These Annual Meetings are the ideal opportunity for the Belgian Development Cooperation Team to engage with its partners, in order to foster transformation of the international financial institutions and make them more effective and efficient.

With the Sustainable Development Goals lagging and multiple crises hitting the world, we need to step up to leave no one behind, especially the poorest and most vulnerable. Belgium is actively engaged in making sure that the international financial architecture, including the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund, is fit for today’s world. We need to be bold and ambitious to make finance work for those who need it. We are working together with the countries and regions where the Belgian Development Cooperation is active, in order to make every euro count and have mutually beneficial partnerships.” – Heidy Rombouts, Director General for Development Cooperation and Humanitarian Aid at the FPS Foreign Affairs, Foreign Trade and Development Cooperation.
 

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