IMF Conference

The Fiscal Affairs Department (FAD) of the IMF will celebrate 60 years since it was formed in 1964 with a one-day conference, “60 Years of FAD: The Fiscal Affair Continues,“ on November 4, 2024, in Washington D.C., USA.

Even as prospects for a global soft landing have improved, fiscal policy continues to struggle with legacies of high debt and deficits, while facing new challenges. Risks to public finances are acute, reflecting the pressures of aging societies, industrial policies, geopolitical tensions, the needs of a greener and more equitable society and now, the threat to labor from AI technologies. Lower medium-term growth prospects have worsened debt dynamics and compounded the risks to fiscal sustainability. Fiscal policy challenges are especially acute in low-income countries, where financing is scarce and limits the ability of governments to support economic and human development.

In this context, the conference will bring together fiscal policy experts, senior policy makers, and former and current IMF staff. They will look back at the contributions of FAD to the global fiscal policy discourse and its service to the membership. They will discuss the likely evolution of sovereign debt market and the role that public policy can play in making AI beneficial for workers and growth. And they will look ahead to the challenges that will emerge for fiscal policy in the future, and the choices fiscal policymakers will face, especially in low-income and fragile countries. The conference will also be an occasion to celebrate the evolution and impact of FAD’s capacity development (CD) from serving a small section of the membership to covering nearly every corner of the world.

Agenda

9:00 A.M.	Opening remarks. Gita Gopinath, First Deputy Managing Director of the IMF, introduced by Vitor Gaspar, Director, Fiscal Affairs Department, IMF.
9:15 - 10:30 A.M.	Sovereign and Private Debt Moderator: Ceyla Pazarbasioglu, Director, Strategy, Policy and Review Department, IMF Panelists: Ali Abbas (Deputy Director, Fiscal Affairs Department, IMF) Carlo Cottarelli (Former Director Fiscal Affairs Department, IMF) Christoph Trebesch (Professor, Kiel University)
10:30 - 11:00 AM	The Surge in FAD’s Capacity Development Delivery (A/V) Moderators: Katherine Baer (Deputy Director, Fiscal Affairs Department) Juan Toro (Deputy Director, Fiscal Affairs Department)
11.00 - 11:30 A.M.	Coffee break
11:30 A.M. - 12:45 P.M.	FAD in the Global Discourse Moderator: Ruud De Mooij , Deputy Director, Fiscal Affairs Department, IMF Panelists: Zainab Ahmed (Executive Director, World Bank) Abdulelah Alrasheedy (Deputy Minister of Macro-Fiscal Policies, Ministry of Finance, Saudi Arabia) Adam Posen (President, Peterson Institute of International Economics) Mark Sobel (U.S. Chairman, OMFIF)
12:45 - 1:00 P.M.	FAD Montage (A/V) A look back at FAD through the decades.
1:00 - 2:15 P.M.	Lunch (by invitation)
2:15 - 3:30 P.M.	Public Policy for AI Moderator: Era Dabla-Norris, Deputy Director, Fiscal Affairs Department, IMF Panelists: Simon Johnson (Professor, MIT Sloan School of Management and Peterson institute of International Economics) Branko Milanovic (Professor, City University of New York) Christine Qiang (Global Director, Digital Transformation Global Department, World Bank)
3.30 – 4:00 P.M.	Coffee break
4:00 – 5:15 P.M.	The Future of Fiscal Policy Moderator: Vitor Gaspar (Director, Fiscal Affairs Department, IMF) Panelists: Jason Furman (Professor, Kennedy School of Government, Harvard University) Ilan Goldfajn (President, Inter-American Development Bank) Mick Keen (Professor, Tokyo University)

Conference Organizing Committee: Katherine Baer (Deputy Director, FAD), Mitali Das (Advisor, FAD), and Andrew Okello (Deputy Division Chief, FAD).

Conference Coordinators: Agnese de Leo (Administrative Coordinator), Harsha Padaruth (Administrative Coordinator), Luciana Marcelino (Administrative Coordinator) Martha Gaytan Frettlohr (Administrative Coordinator), Sahara De la Torre (Administrative Coordinator), and Sheetal Prasad (Senior Administrative Coordinator) – all FAD.

The conference (which is in-person only) is open to all Fund employees and invited external guests (registration is required of external guests who will all receive a link to the registration form). Please note that the deadline for registration for this conference is October 25th, 2024. Registered external guests will be required to present photo identification on entering the IMF at 1900 Pennsylvania Avenue, N.W., Washington D.C. For questions regarding the conference, please email FAD_60th_anniversary@imf.org