## High Level Plenary - Remarks As Delivered

_IMF News, March 23, 2021_

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## Bibliographic details
- Published: March 23, 2021

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### Overview
- Occasion: WTO Aid-for-Trade Stocktaking Event.
- Speaker highlights the global context: "the worst recession in peacetime since the Great Depression" and signs of improving outlook due to government support and vaccine success.
- Recovery characterized as uncertain and uneven, with a risk of "great divergence" within and between countries following last year's lockdown.

### Health crisis and vaccines
- Main message: collective efforts to end the health crisis are essential; "vaccine policy is going to be the most important economic policy" in 2021 and possibly 2022.
- Actions prioritized:
  - Scale up production and distribution, especially in low-income countries through Covax.
  - Reallocate excess vaccines from surplus to deficit countries.
  - Remove trade barriers that limit access to vaccines and treatment.
- Quantified economic impact:
  - Faster progress in ending the health crisis is projected to raise global income cumulatively by US$9 trillion from 2020 to 2025.
  - The US$9 trillion is split 60-40 between emerging markets and developing countries and advanced economies.
- Risk highlighted: new mutations threaten progress if the pandemic is not defeated everywhere.

### Uneven recovery and distributional impacts
- Data points:
  - Emerging and developing countries, excluding China, are projected by 2020 to have cumulative per capita income losses as high as 22% versus 13% in advanced economies.
  - Only half of the countries that were narrowing income gaps relative to advanced economies are forecast to continue doing so over 2021 to 2022.
- Groups hit especially hard: low skilled, informal workers, young, and women.
- Evidence of trade-related labor gains:
  - In Africa, workers in export-oriented firms earn 16% more than workers in non-export-oriented rivals.
  - Trade tends to reduce gender bias in wages.

### Trade, growth, and policy measures
- Trade performance and projections (exact figures preserved):
  - 9.6% decline in global trade in 2020.
  - Projecting trade volumes to grow by 8.5% in 2021 and by 6.5% in 2021.
- National-level policy levers to accelerate trade growth:
  - Reduce import tariffs.
  - Simplify customs procedures.
  - Cut export duties.
  - Increase transparency to inject momentum in growth.
- Complementary international action:
  - Reform the global trade system and resolve existing tensions to bring new momentum for trade.
- Broader macro policy guidance:
  - Maintain support to households and firms to avoid economic scars (long-term unemployment, fractured supply chains).
  - Lay the foundation for growth anchored in medium-term fiscal sustainability: "keep the receipts but spend".
  - Domestic measures: raise domestic revenues, make public spending more efficient, improve the business environment.

### Green and digital transitions
- Trade central to structural shifts toward a green and digital economy.
- Role of trade and technology:
  - Exchange of goods and services and new technologies will reduce costs (e.g., renewable energy) and provide expertise (cooler buildings, drought- and flood-resilient agriculture).
- Responsibility and inclusion:
  - Advanced-economy investment in the green transition must be complemented so poor countries can undertake job-rich climate adaptation measures.
  - Praise for the Bank leading climate adaptation in the developing world.
- Digital inclusion impact (exact figures preserved):
  - Expanding internet access in sub‑Saharan Africa by 10% could increase real per capita GDP growth 4%.
- Mitigating uneven benefits:
  - Domestic policies such as unemployment insurance, job training, and job search assistance can help workers affected by import competition or technological change.

### IMF role, support, and financing
- The Fund shifted policy advice rapidly to support workers and businesses during the pandemic.
- Lending and support statistics (exact figures preserved):
  - The IMF lent to 52 low-income countries.
  - Total IMF financing has reached over $107 billion.
- Special Drawing Rights (SDRs): the Fund is prepared to focus on the opportunity for SDRs to lift up reserves of countries; final decision rests with shareholders.

### Key policy recommendations and calls to action
- Prioritize ending the health crisis through scale-up of vaccine production, distribution, and reallocations, and by removing trade barriers to medical goods.
- Use trade openness to drive inclusive growth and poverty reduction, and to support women's economic participation.
- Maintain targeted fiscal support now while planning for medium-term fiscal sustainability.
- Implement national reforms to boost trade: lower tariffs, simplify customs, cut export duties, and enhance transparency.
- Support green and digital transitions with trade, technology transfer, and investments that include low-income countries.
- Strengthen social safety nets and active labor market policies (unemployment insurance, job training, job search assistance) to ease structural adjustment.

*High Level Plenary - Remarks As Delivered, March 23, 2021.*

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## References

- [https://www.imf.org/en/about/senior-officials/bios/kristalina-georgieva](https://www.imf.org/en/about/senior-officials/bios/kristalina-georgieva)
- [People's Republic of China and the IMF](http://www.imf.org/external/country/CHN/index.htm)
- [Speeches](https://www.imf.org/en/news/searchnews)
- [PRESS CENTER](http://presscenter.imf.org/)
- [https://www.imf.org/en/home](https://www.imf.org/en/home)

_Source: https://www.imf.org/en/news/articles/2021/03/23/sp032321-md-high-level-plenary-wto_