Transcript of IMF Press Briefing
March 7, 2019
MR. RICE: Good morning, everyone, and welcome to this briefing on behalf of the International Monetary Fund. I'm Gerry Rice of the Communications Department. And, as usual, this morning this briefing will be embargoed until 10:30 a.m., and that's Washington time.
Also, as usual, I'll take some time to go over a little bit of management travel here at the Fund and major events, and then I'll turn to questions in the room. And I'm seeing quite number of questions on line. I'll try to get to as many of those as I can.
So let me turn to IMF events and so on. Tomorrow, which is International Women's Day, the Managing Director of the IMF, Christine Lagarde, and the interim President of the World Bank Group, Kristalina Georgieva, will have a conversation on the topic of leadership, appropriately, and the benefits of a more gender balanced world. And, again, this is to mark International Women's Week, International Women's Day, which is tomorrow. That event starts at 3:30 p.m. (CORRECTION: the event starts at 3:00 p.m.) It will be live webcast. You can watch it. It's going to be on our website, on the World Bank's website and in the usual paces. So that's tomorrow afternoon.
Then the only other couple of things I want to mention is that David Lipton will be at CSIS, the Center for Strategic and International Studies here in Washington next week, March 13, to launch an IMF book on the future of China's bond market. That's March 13, David Lipton.
The Spring Meetings are coming up and you can register for that. And, as I said, this week, as you may have seen from some of our communications already, there has been a strong focus from the IMF on the role of women in the economy and gender issues. Amongst other things, you might have seen our latest issue of our quarterly magazine, Finance and Development, which is focused appropriately, again, on that issue of women's role in the economy. And as those of you who follow the Fund know, this is now an issue that permeates our work, whether it's programs or lending programs, surveillance, analysis, research, capacity development. It's a big issue for the IMF.
And on that note, let me wish everyone a very happy International Women's Day tomorrow.
Andrew, good morning.