World Bank and IMF choose Istanbul for annual meeting: October 6-7 2009 İstanbul's many amenities, its beauty, its location and its global importance were ultimately what persuaded the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund (IMF) to choose the city as the host of their annual meeting, said a high-level delegation of World Bank officials in İstanbul yesterday.
The annual meeting, considered one of the year's most important international gatherings, will address issues related to the ongoing global financial crisis and will attempt to come up with solutions to overcome the many problems faced by some of the poorest countries in the world.
The meeting, which will be held Oct. 6-7, will be attended by finance ministers and central bank heads from more than 185 countries and is expected to draw more than 13,000 international participants.
At a press conference yesterday morning in İstanbul, World Bank Vice President and Corporate Secretary Kristalina Georgieva told members of the press that the fund and the bank had chosen İstanbul for a number of reasons, not least of which was the belief that hosting such a conference would help the city position itself, not only as a destination for future international conferences of similar stature, but also as a global financial hub.
“İstanbul is a vibrant center for finance and investment and is able to host such events,” Georgieva said, noting that Turkish authorities had long been positioning themselves as a city with such capabilities. Georgieva told members of the press that “2009 is not a normal year,” noting that it is the first time since World War II that a global economic contraction of 1.7 percent was predicted.“At present, the global crisis is influencing the whole world. And so, the precautions must be global as well. Because of this, it is important to have the World Bank and the IMF annual meeting in İstanbul.
In these meetings, we want to focus on developing countries, which were affected by the crisis most,” she said, adding that measures should be taken to protect these countries. Although the speaker encouraged observers to look at the long-term gains as the most important benefit to the city, Georgieva was quick to emphasize there were many short-term benefits that the city would gain from the meeting: 3,500 delegates will be present in addition to 1,800-2,000 journalists for a total of more than 13,000 participants; 52 hotels will be filled by the delegation, and many attendees will be accompanied by their spouses.
Shopping, tours and restaurants are but some of the areas in the hospitality and services sector that will experience a significant boost of activity during the event. Georgieva noted that most guests would be staying in the city between three days and a week. The annual World Bank/IMF meeting is held outside of Washington, D.C., every third year. The last three international meetings were held in Prague, Dubai and Singapore. When asked by Today's Zaman what rival cities İstanbul faced in the competition to host the event this year, Georgieva declined to comment, saying that they didn't want to identify the other countries as losers.
She suggested that, in this time of economic crisis, revealing the cities that did not win the privilege to host the event may even lead to economic trouble for those cities' markets. In the last three years, Turkey and the World Bank have concluded over $6 billion in agreements in the areas of sustainable economic development. The Treasury has organized a climate investment fund with an initial pool of $100 million; this funding will be assisted by the World Bank in the preliminary period.
