February 9, 2017
MR. RICE: Good morning everyone, and welcome to this press briefing on behalf of the IMF. I'm Gerry Rice, Communications Director at the Fund. As usual, our briefing this morning is embargoed until 10:30 a.m., that's Washington time.
I'm going to start with some announcements, as usual, and then I'll turn to colleagues in the room. And I can see that colleagues are already quite active online as well, so we'll go there too.
Let me start with Christine Lagarde, the Managing Director, who on February 12-13 will be in Dubai in the United Arab Emirates to do a couple of things: on February 12, she will open the Arab Fiscal Forum, jointly organized by the Arab Monetary Fund and the IMF. The topic will be “Generating public revenue to build resilient economies”. And on the same day, Madame Lagarde will attend the World Government Summit, where, amongst other things, she'll have a conversation with CNN on the shifting global economic landscape. Madame Lagarde will also meet with the authorities, with women leaders, the private sector, and some young tech innovators in the UAE.
David Lipton, our First Deputy Managing Director, will also be quite busy. He'll be here in Washington. David will be launching a book “Modernizing China: investing in soft infrastructure” at the Center for Strategic and International Studies on Tuesday, February 14. And then David will be traveling to Germany, including for the third in our seminar series on the shifting global economic and political landscape. And you may recall that we did one event on this at the Annual Meetings and we did another one in Beijing in November 2016. Next one is being held at the German Council of Foreign Relations. That's February 21, David Lipton in Berlin.
Our Deputy Managing Director Carla Grasso will be in New Delhi to participate in the official opening of the IMF's South Asia Regional Training and Technical Assistance Center, or SARTTAC. That will be on February 13 and 14. And then Carla will be moving on to Singapore, to meet with authorities at the Singapore Training Institute.
And finally, our other Deputy Managing Director, Tao Zhang, will present the IMF’s latest report on Economic Developments and Prospects in Low-Income Developing Countries at the Brookings Institution, in Washington of course. That will be on Thursday, February 16.
And with that let me turn to questions.
QUESTIONER: Gerry, I have a long question. I don’t do that often as you know. I’m sure you know that Mr. Regling in an article published today in the Financial Times argues that, and I quote, “If the agreed reform program is fully implemented, debt sustainability is within reach.” He also asked a question on the debt sustainability, namely why does the IMF come to a different conclusion? He gives the following answer: “The Fund has so far not been able to integrate into its analysis of Greece fundamental factors that set a member of the eurozone apart from other countries in the world.” What is your answer?
MR. RICE: Let me take a few questions on Greece, as I imagine there might be more.
QUESTIONER: Given all these statements coming out from Europe, I can't really understand what Poul Thomsen meant when he said that the gap between the IMF and the Europeans is closing regarding the debt and the fiscal targets. And also I have another one: How easy will it be for Poul Thomsen to go to the Board with a proposal that includes fiscal targets of 3.5 for the period after 18, when most of the Executive Directors agreed that the preferred target is much lower and that Greece does not need additional fiscal consolidation at this time?
