Remarks by Secretary of the Treasury Janet L. Yellen on Multilateral Development Bank Evolution During the 2024 Annual Meetings of the International Monetary Fund and World Bank

As Prepared for Delivery Two years ago on the eve of the Annual Meetings, I called for the evolution of the multilateral development banks. Today, I am glad to be here with President Banga, Lord Malloch-Brown, and Minister Musokotwane to lay out what we’ve achieved and to reaffirm our commitment to sustaining momentum. I called for evolution because, as we began to exit COVID recessions around the world, I and many others saw that the stakes were high. There had been insufficient progress or troubling reversals on many of the Sustainable Development Goals. And we faced urgent global challenges that could quickly unravel hard-earned development gains and diminish prospects for the future: from climate change, to pandemics and other global health emergencies, to fragility, conflict, and violence.