International Monetary Fund (IMF) Managing Director Kristalina Georgieva
Doha: International Monetary Fund (IMF) Managing Director Kristalina Georgieva (pictured) has praised the role of Qatar in evacuating people from Afghanistan. She was speaking during a roundtable discussion on ‘Future of the Youth: Role of Education and Technology’ with university students including from Qatar Foundation partner universities, Qatar University, and the Afghan Robotics Girls Team.
Addressing the students, she covered a range of important topics including role of technology, access to finance, growing inequality and the role of IMF. She expressed concern about growing inequality in the world which has increased during the pandemic.
“Qatar deserves a great deal of praise because Qatar is the country that has helped more than anybody else to evacuate Afghan people that are seeking to have a better chance especially girls and women,” said Georgieva.
“Restricting the girls from studying in Afghanistan is a tragedy, any nation that wants to progress has to tap into the talent of all its people – men and women," she said.
"Trying to grow an economy only relying on men- it is like clapping only with one hand- you can’t do that.” she added. She expressed concern about access to finance and unemployment in the region. “We are concerned about access to finance for young people,” Kristalina Georgieva added. “Small and Medium Enterprises (SMEs) in this region are 96 percent of all registered enterprises and they are the major contributors to employment. They employ 60 percent of those that get jobs; but they only get 7 percent of financing. So obviously, this is something that we as IMF, we work with our members in the region to try to change,” she added.
“Technology opens up incredible opportunities. Artificial Intelligence, digitalization, access to the internet, they make it possible for what you do, which is to dream of your own role and then have the technological means to make your dream a reality,” she added.
She also expressed concern about growing inequality in the world which has increased during the pandemic.
“What we see is the world that is quite unequal and unfortunately during the pandemic the inequality has grown- inequality within countries, inequality across countries.” She said that wealthy countries were able to support their people and business on a massive scale, they provided 28 percent of their GDP equivalent to help; the middle income countries 6 percent and poor countries 2 percent of their small GDP.
