In October 2019, Dolgion Aldar (IRIM Board Member) attended the IMF-World Bank Annual Meetings in Washington DC. The Annual Meetings bring together decision makers and stakeholders including the ministers of finance, parliamentarians and representatives from civil society organizations to discuss and recommend solutions to global issues such as the world economic outlook, poverty reduction and aid effectiveness.

Whilst attending the Civil Society Policy Forum during the Annual Meetings, she shared IRIM’s Social Well-being Survey results and contributed to policy development across the issues of social protection, debt sustainability, gender equality and civil society engagement with fellow civil society partners and representatives of the IMF/World Bank.

In addition, her key takeaways from the meetings included the following:

  • There is a growing recognition by decision makers of the impacts of economic inequality in both advanced and emerging economies;
  • There is a wide agreement that public spending on areas of social protection should be sustained and that effective programs to reduce the negative impacts of IMF’s fiscal consolidation policies on financial, gender and social inequality should continue to be developed and implemented.
  • The civil society representatives urged the Fund and the Bank to make their operations more transparent and participatory to adopt formal consultation mechanism with the civil society organisations and key stakeholders.

Dolgion, having attended last year’s Annual Meetings in Bali, was pleased to report that these issues and particularly their solutions  had continued to advance under the auspices of the IMF, the Government of Mongolia and other development agencies.