Minister Virolainen to attend Annual Meeting of World Bank Group in Indonesia

Minister for Foreign Trade and Development Anne-Mari Virolainen will participate in the Annual Meeting of the World Bank Group and the meeting of the joint Development Committee of the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and the World Bank in Bali, Indonesia on 11–13 October.

In addition to the official programme, Minister Anne-Mari Virolainen will host a meeting focusing on human rights issues together with Norway's Minister of International Development Nikolai Astrup. Finland's development policy is founded on a human rights based approach, and Finland emphasises the role of human rights also in the activities of development banks. 

"Respect for human rights and development of countries go hand in hand. We must defend the rights of women, girls, sexual minorities and persons with disabilities and keep on working against growing inequality. Finland advocates this important theme also in development banks, which are important actors in developing countries," Minister Virolainen says.

During her visit to Indonesia, Minister Virolainen will also meet members of the senior management of the World Bank Group, for example Vice President for Human Development Anette Dixon and Vice President of the World Bank for Africa Hafez Ghanem. In these meetings, Minister Virolainen will emphasise Finland's role as a leading country in education exports and development cooperation in the education sector.

 

New Human Capital Index to be launched

The main themes of the meeting of the joint Development Committee of the IMF and the World Bank are closely related to the World Development Report 2018, which focuses on the transformation of work.  In this connection, the World Bank will launch a Human Capital Index describing the importance of education and health as the foundation for the development of countries.

"Finland's development has for the past century been strongly based on education, and Finland has a lot to offer in the education sector, also in international contexts," Virolainen says.

The World Bank Group is one of the world's biggest financiers of sustainable development. The International Development Association IDA, the World Bank's fund for the poorest countries, is one of the most important channels for Finland's development cooperation.

The meetings may be followed on Twitter under the hashtags #IMFMeetings ja #WBGMeetings.

Before the annual meeting, Minister Virolainen will lead a Team Finland business delegation visit to Indonesia. A separate press release concerning this was published on 5 October 2018.


Inquiries (NB. Bali's time zone, +5 hours):

Juha Kirstilä, Special Adviser to the Minister for Foreign Trade and Development, tel. +358 40 552 8200, Satu Santala, Director General, Department for Development Policy, tel. +358 295 351 815.

The Foreign Ministry’s email addresses are in the format firstname.lastname@formin.fi.