IMF, World Bank open annual meetings

The annual meetings of the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and its sister agency World Bank began here on Friday. Finance ministers and central bankers from around the world gathered in Washington D.C. to assess global economic developments and ways to boost recovery. The meetings will focus on growth and jobs, and provide a platform for discussions among policy makers and other stakeholders from all over the world to support global economic growth and job creation. As different economies are highly inter-connected with each other, there should be more concerted cooperation when devising individual fiscal and monetary policies as well as structural and financial reforms, IMF Managing Director Christine Lagarde told reporters Thursday. At a separate press conference on Thursday, World Bank President Jim Yong Kim stressed that over 1 billion people live in extreme poverty, earning 1.25 dollars a day or less, which needs urgent efforts to tackle.