Apr 12, Colombo: State Minister of Finance Shehan Semasinghe represented Sri Lanka at the Intergovernmental Group of Twenty-Four (G-24) on International Monetary Affairs and Development during the 2023 Spring Meetings of International Monetary Fund (IMF) and World Bank Group (WBG) on Tuesday.

The State Minister tweeted that he was happy to represent Sri Lanka at the G- 24 on securing sustainable and inclusive growth amidst emerging challenges.

Ministers of the Intergovernmental Group of Twenty-Four on International Monetary Affairs and Development held their 109th meeting in Washington D.C. on April 11, 2023

The Minister noted that this year’s meeting took place at a time the world is gradually recovering from multiple crises, but global growth remains low with downside risks.

Emerging Market and Developing Economies (EMDEs) face significant risks and difficult policy tradeoffs as they respond to global spillovers of monetary policy tightening in advanced economies, capital outflows, climate-related policies and shocks, and high debt vulnerabilities.

The meeting provided a platform to discuss key areas where the interactional community and multilateral institutions, can effectively support the policy efforts of Emerging Market and Developing Economies towards securing sustained and inclusive growth and making progress towards the achievement of the Sustainable Development Goals. A key part of this is liquidity support and access to financing, both from official and private sources, in the near-and medium-term, the Minister noted.

The G24 countries also agreed that combating climate change and its effects need to be accelerated and called for advanced economies to fulfil their commitments under the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change and provide new and additional financial resources to support developing countries.

The report of G-24 meeting can be found here.