27-29 May - World Bank Debt Conference: How to Deal with Shocks?
DFI attended the World Bank Debt Management Facility Stakeholders Conference in Brussels. After participating in the Implementing Partners Consultative Group (ICG) meeting, DFI presented in a session on How Can Countries Be More Resilient to Shocks? The presentation suggested that most shocks are not shocks at all, but predictable; that we know exactly what to do about them from past experience; and that this involves the international community and the Bretton Woods Institutions playing a leading role in regulating to prevent shocks, in providing social protection funding to the poor to make them genuinely resilient, and in providing unconditional and highly concessional financial support to poorer countries to offset the effects of shocks, because they will never be resilient enough to “adjust” to their consequences given their poverty and vulnerability.
