“We are very excited to have our annual meetings in Morocco. This is the first time in 50 years that these meetings will be on the continent of Africa”, she stated in an interview to MAP, noting that the Kingdom has always been a crossroads between the Middle East, Africa and Europe.
“And what better place than this crossroads to bring together the global community to discuss our global challenges at a time when cooperation is more vital than ever, especially to confront some of the challenges that we can only face and overcome as a global community”, she said, adding that climate change is at the top of these challenges.
Referring to the preparations underway to host this major event where nearly 14,000 delegates from 190 member states of the IMF and the WB are expected, Julie Kozack recalled having accompanied the Fund’s Managing Director, Kristalina Georgieva during a visit to Morocco last June.
“The preparations are coming along wonderfully. We had a wonderful visit at the site. We saw the construction, and we can see that the meetings are going to be underway and hosted in Morocco soon in Marrakesh”, she added.
These Annual Meetings bring together leaders from the public sector (central banks, ministries of Finance and Development, MPs) and the private sector, as well as representatives of civil society organizations and academia experts.
On the themes to be discussed during the Marrakesh edition, Julie Kozack, who served as an economist within the IMF before being entrusted with the management of the communications department last November, noted that this event is an opportunity for the global community to broach some of the specific challenges in Africa like youth inclusion, climate change and the debt problem that many countries in Africa are facing. It is also a venue to discuss the opportunities that the continent offers.
“Africa and the Middle East are regions with young populations. This makes them the future. So one of the big agenda items will be +how do we harness this, this vibrancy of youth in Africa, in the Middle East as we think about the future and how can we harness that vibrancy of youth when we think about the opportunities offered by digitalization and new technologies?+”, she said.
She noted that it is also time to discuss the opportunities and the promise that lies in Africa and the Middle East.
Regarding the partnership between Morocco and the IMF, Julie Kozack recalled the two-year agreement for an amount of approximately 5 billion dollars in favor of the Kingdom under the flexible credit line, designed for crisis prevention.
“In order for a country to receive this flexible credit line, they have to have very strong policies and very strong fundamentals”, she explained, adding that Morocco is in that category. “It means the economy is well-managed, that it is stable, but it also means that, like many other countries, it can be vulnerable to external events”.
The IMF official further noted that the digital sector is among the areas covered by the Morocco-IMF partnership, recalling the international conference that was held in Rabat last June at the initiative of Bank Al-Maghrib (Central Bank) and in partnership with the IMF, about central bank digital currencies and the ways in which we can harness digital technology to improve financial inclusion, to bring the youth more into society, and also to find ways to make public services more readily and easily available to people.
