Minister Laporte represents Seychelles at official missions in Washington |05 October 2013

Minister for Finance, Trade and Investment, Pierre Laporte, will be representing Seychelles at several high-level events in Washington, D.C. this month.
These include the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and World Bank Group’s (WBG) annual meetings and the Commonwealth Finance Ministers’ meeting.

Mr Laporte’s first stop will be at the High-Level Mission on Small States’ Debt from October 6-7. Seychelles is one of five countries, including Jamaica, St Kitts and Nevis, Samoa and Mauritius represented in the mission. The small group of Commonwealth leaders will raise advocacy about the challenges of debt and liquidity faced by small states, and will look at practical solutions to overcome their challenges.

The group is expected to meet leaders of key financial institutions as well as Commonwealth and G20 country representatives. The mission will then report the outcomes of its work to the next Commonwealth Heads of Government Meeting in Colombo, Sri Lanka, next month. Seychelles and Mauritius are representing countries where debt strategies have been successful in bringing debt to more sustainable levels.

The 2013 Meetings of Commonwealth Finance Ministers will then take place from October 8-9 at the IMF’s headquarters in the US capital – Washington. The theme for the meeting will be the Post-2015 Global Development Framework, and discussion in the plenary sessions will focus on reform of global governance and financing the post-2015 development framework.

Mr Laporte will subsequently be attending the IMF and WBG annual meetings due to take place from October 10-13. At the annual meetings, the board of governors will make decisions on how current international monetary issues should be addressed and approve corresponding resolutions.

The minister has said that the annual meetings are an ideal opportunity to meet counterparts from other member states, as officials meet face-to-face with the management of the Bretton Woods institutions to discuss opportunities for further work programmes and other help,

He added that he was delighted to be afforded the opportunity to speak at the launch of a new Commonwealth publication entitled Tourism and Inclusive Growth in Small Island Developing States by Julia Jeyacheya and Mark P. Hampton.

The study, which used data from Seychelles as well as other small states including Jamaica, the Maldives and Mauritius, analyses both direct and indirect channels through which the gains from tourism are achieved.