IMF Middle East director shares how its new Arab-World Bank coalition for war hit countries will work

What defines new committee is its 'partnership with the region', says Jihad Azour

Jihad Azour, the Middle East director of the IMF. Photo: The Al-Ula Conference for Emerging Market Economies

Palestine, Syria and Lebanon are the focus of the new co-ordination group established on Sunday by the IMF, World Bank, Arab Co-ordination Group, and regional countries, according to the International Monetary Fund’s Middle East director.

What defines the new committee is its “partnership with the region”, Jihad Azour told The National on the sidelines of the AlUla Conference for Emerging Market Economies in Saudi Arabia where the group was formed.

Mr Azour said Syria faces a similar lack of human infrastructure as former Soviet states did after the fall of the Soviet Union. Syria's new Foreign Minister Asaad Al Shibani, who was appointed in December, attended the high-level meeting.

To ensure aid isn't being given without seeing development, Mr Azour said, “you need to train a large group of civil servants at the Central Bank, Ministry of Finance … in statistics and other core functions of the state. And most of them speak Arabic”.

“We are adapting, what we know, to the needs of those countries,” he added, saying that the informal group is partnering with Arab institutions on the ground to tailor to these specific needs. “We have a centre in Kuwait that is in charge of capacity development. We provide technical assistance through our Middle East Technical Assistance Centre based in Beirut,” he said.

Core members

Through such partnerships, this informal mechanism will create "a capacity to co-ordinate faster and more efficiently ... [and] we can serve those countries better and faster," he said of the group, which plans to expand its partners at the upcoming 2025 Spring Meetings of the World Bank and IMF in late April in Washington.

The informal coalition is already in talks with prospective members. These consist of bilateral groups, mostly in the Gulf, and also with UN agencies from the international side.

Mr Azour said the the current members of the group are global multinational development banks including the IMF and World Bank, in addition to regional institutions such as the Islamic Development Bank and the Arab Monetary Fund among others.

The National interviewed Jihad Azour, the International Monetary Fund's director for the Middle East

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The Gulf countries and the intergovernmental political and economic Group of Seven (G7) including Japan "are [also] very much involved".

"The purpose of this core group is to create a platform for co-ordination between the different stakeholders," he said.

The coalition is formed at a time where finding funding partners has become difficult, as the US, the world's largest donor – accounting for 41.8 per cent of global aid last year, according to the UN Office for the Co-ordination of Humanitarian Affairs – is changing its aid policies.

Gaza and West Bank

The IMF has provided more than $37 billion of financing over the last four years to aid in the development of economies in fragility as a result of crisis. This is in addition to technical assistance to help countries implement reforms and trainings, said Mr Azour.

With its new regional office in Riyadh established in April of last year, the multilateral institution has been able to better serve the region by having discussions with regional partners, providing co-ordination on the ground, and developing yesterday's informal group to support fragile economies in the Middle East.

In the case of Gaza, UN estimates more than $53 billion will be needed to reconstruct the war-torn enclave after 15 months of being assaulted. The IMF, now with the Riyadh office and the coalition, is able to help both Gaza and the West Bank more directly.

"As an institution [we are] in regular consultation with the Palestinian Authority, [and] we provide technical assistance. Also, we help them in their policy settings," he said.

"We are helping also the central bank in improving its capacity ... the Palestinian monetary authorities, to provide the needed support now for the post conflict," said Mr Azour adding that these are the capacities which do not exist at the moment.

The IMF and the coalition will also work beyond the dimension of economic recovery and infrastructure, and will co-ordinate with UN agencies on the humanitarian side.

The informal group of regional leaders and multilateral institutions also hope to expand its reach to Yemen as well to Sudan “sometime soon” when conditions allow, said Mr Azour.