Thank you, Minister Franco, and let me join previous colleagues in congratulating you on your appointment and on today’s agenda. Inequality, poverty, and climate change will be the defining issues of our age, and I welcome your and Italy’s focus on these topics. It is time to think big and act big in finding solutions. The voices of developing nations will play a key role in the effectiveness of our response, and I assure you that the World Bank Group will support their success during your G20 Presidency.
One of the key challenges to recovery is addressing the needs of countries facing fragility, conflict and violence (FCV). On Sunday, Sudan announced the unification and stabilization of its exchange rate. Their goal is to stop the smuggling crisis, incentivize exports, and unlock donor resources, remittances, and new investment flows that were blocked by the dual exchange rate.
The World Bank and IMF have worked closely with the Sudanese authorities on the exchange rate stabilization and other key reforms, and I’m optimistic these will lead to broad-based growth and poverty reduction. G20 communiques and Leaders’ declarations have correctly linked growth and investment to the stability of exchange rates over the last years, and I think that Ethiopia and Nigeria would both benefit by ending their costly dual exchange rate systems.
In Sudan, we have already been able to provide IDA pre-arrears clearance grant financing for the Sudan Family Support Program. We’re working with several of you to further increase the funding and I welcome our joint efforts. We expect rapid clearance of Sudan’s arrears to the World Bank and hope for speedy progress toward Sudan’s HIPC decision point. If achieved, the HIPC decision points of two fragile states, Sudan and Somalia, in a space of little over a year, is a landmark achievement for which the world has waited for a quarter of a century.
I’d like to update you on our actions in three other areas—vaccines, climate, and debt sustainability.
