CEF at 2019 Spring Meetings of the World Bank Group and the IMF
We attended 2019 Spring Meetings of the World Bank Group and the International Monetary Fund. We held several meetings with our partners from the IMF and World Bank, as well as all representatives of our member countries. CEF director, Jana Repanšek; Chair of the CEF Governing Board, Vladimir Munteanu, First Deputy Governor of National Bank of Moldova; and representing Slovenia where CEF is headquartered, Metod Dragonja, State Secretary at the Ministry of Finance of Slovenia met with Carla Grasso, Deputy Managing Director and Chief Administrative Officer of International Monetary Fund. They discussed results of cooperation between the CEF and IMF Capacity Development along with ways to further strengthen our partnership.
We met with representatives of IMF Fiscal Affairs Department (FAD) and IMF Statistics Department (STA) with whom we share long-term fruitful cooperation and rely on synergies between the IMF technical assistance and the CEF learning initiatives. We host two IMF FAD technical assistance advisors, covering public financial management and revenue administration, and an IMF STA technical assistance advisor covering government finance statistics at CEF premises in Ljubljana. FAD advisors are funded by the EU-financed program to support economic governance and public finance management in six pre-accession countries: Albania, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Kosovo, Macedonia, Montenegro, and Serbia. The government finance statistics advisor that joined the CEF in September 2016, is financed through Swiss SECO grant. Offices and administrative support at the CEF is an in-kind contribution from the Slovenian Government through the CEF. We also met with the IMF Monetary and Capital Markets Department (MCM), where we discussed strengthening cooperation in our workshops and through cooperation with their regional technical assistance activities.
We held a meeting with representatives of PEFA (Public Expenditure and Financial Accountability) Secretariat hosted at the World Bank and discussed the experience of SEE countries in the use of PEFA for public financial management reform planning and implementation, as well as ways to strengthen our cooperation, including through delivery of joint training activities. We used the opportunity of the Spring Meetings also for several bilateral meetings with high-level officials from ministries of finance and central banks of CEF constituency countries.