A team from the Min­istry of Fi­nance and Cen­tral Bank will trav­el to Wash­ing­ton, DC to par­tic­i­pate in the 2024 an­nu­al meet­ings of the In­ter­na­tion­al Mon­e­tary Fund (the IMF) and World Bank, a note from the Cen­tral Bank said.

It ex­plained the IMF has two for­mal meet­ings with its mem­bers a year: spring (April) and an­nu­al IMF meet­ings (Oc­to­ber).

At these meet­ings, the IMF gives an ac­count of its stew­ard­ship to date, its plans for the fu­ture and shares its out­look on eco­nom­ic is­sues.

The Cen­tral Bank fur­ther ex­plained the T&T team is able to as­cer­tain these per­spec­tives, in­ter­ro­gate fund staff on these mat­ters and co­or­di­nate with oth­er mem­bers to fur­ther the coun­try’s in­ter­ests, in­clud­ing at meet­ings of the Con­stituen­cy Group­ing in which this coun­try be­longs and oth­er de­vel­op­ing coun­tries in the Group of 24.

The meet­ings al­so pro­vide the op­por­tu­ni­ty to li­aise with the many aca­d­e­mics, busi­ness­men, in­vestors, bankers and civ­il so­ci­ety rep­re­sen­ta­tives from across the globe who con­gre­gate on these oc­ca­sions.

The state­ment fur­ther ex­plained the IMF has a num­ber of lend­ing pro­grammes aimed at pro­vid­ing fi­nanc­ing as­sis­tance to coun­tries in need– in­clud­ing some specif­i­cal­ly aimed at low­er in­come coun­tries, to pro­mote re­silience or pre­cau­tion­ary arrange­ments.

The re­lease of funds is tied to the coun­try meet­ing cer­tain tar­gets and bench­marks, which form part of a dis­cus­sion be­tween fund staff and the au­thor­i­ties.

The Cen­tral Bank not­ed that at the present time, T&T does not have any lend­ing arrange­ments with the fund, stat­ing that in the past though, this coun­try had two stand-by arrange­ments with the IMF, in 1989 and 1990. Oth­er Caribbean coun­tries have been re­cent ben­e­fi­cia­ries of fund lend­ing in­clud­ing Bar­ba­dos and Suri­name.

As it per­tains to ca­pac­i­ty de­vel­op­ment, the state­ment not­ed the fund pro­vides an ar­ray of work­shops, sem­i­nars, on­line and in-per­son train­ing for gov­ern­ment of­fi­cials and par­tic­u­lar groups of in­di­vid­u­als such as jour­nal­ists on key top­ics re­lat­ed to the var­i­ous work streams of the fund.

Such top­ics in­clude rev­enue man­age­ment, bal­ance of pay­ments sta­tis­tics, eco­nom­ic fore­cast­ing method­olo­gies and pub­lic debt.

While some of the in-per­son train­ing is done at the IMF’s head­quar­ters, this is com­ple­ment­ed by train­ing from the tech­ni­cal as­sis­tance cen­tres.

In the case of the T&T and the wider Caribbean, the Bar­ba­dos-based Caribbean Re­gion­al Tech­ni­cal As­sis­tance Cen­tre (CAR­TAC) pro­vides ad­di­tion­al tech­ni­cal as­sis­tance which is fund­ed not on­ly by the IMF but al­so a wide range of donors from around the world.

In ad­di­tion, mem­bers can re­quest the fund ex­am­ines and pro­vides rec­om­men­da­tions on spe­cif­ic top­ics.

In the case of T&T re­cent in­ves­ti­ga­tions have cov­ered cy­ber­se­cu­ri­ty in fi­nan­cial in­sti­tu­tions, and fin­tech reg­u­la­tion and leg­is­la­tion, the Cen­tral Bank said.

The IMF is one of the key glob­al in­sti­tu­tions aimed at pro­mot­ing growth and de­vel­op­ment among its mem­bers.

It was con­ceived at the Bret­ton Woods con­fer­ence in Ju­ly 1944 and be­gan op­er­a­tions in March 1947.

The IMF achieves its ob­jec­tives through three strands of work – pol­i­cy ad­vice/sur­veil­lance, ca­pac­i­ty de­vel­op­ment and lend­ing.

T&T has been a mem­ber of the IMF since Sep­tem­ber 16, 1963 and there are cur­rent­ly 190 mem­ber coun­tries and this

will ex­pand to 191 on Oc­to­ber 21, 2024 when Liecht­en­stein for­mal­ly joins the IMF.