Development and emerging economies

1. A decade of results

Opening the group's 18th plenary, Mathias Cormann notes that membership has grown from 82 to 148 since the first meeting in Kyoto, with Guatemala the newest. Members swapped gaps in tax rules for shared standards, added transparency and introduced a worldwide minimum tax on large multinationals. Profit per worker in investment hubs fell 27%, and the link between profit location and tax rates weakened by up to 40%. Roughly 65 jurisdictions apply the minimum tax, and a July study sees profit shifting dropping by a quarter to almost half while revenues rise 3 to 5% yearly.

2. Why work continues

Public debt exceeds pre-2008 levels in nearly every G20 economy and growth is slowing to 2.9%, so efficient, trusted tax systems matter more. Three priorities follow: make sure all members, especially developing ones, benefit through simpler reviews, wider access to country reports and training for about 150 000 officials; keep rules suited to change, with new work on mobile workers and on tax, inequality and growth, plus AI in administration and ageing societies.

3. Digital economy talks

The third priority is a constructive route on the tax questions raised by digitalisation. Members will restart the debate from evidence on how the sector evolved. Agreement will be hard, but the aim is to avoid fragmentation, protect tax bases and give firms and governments predictability, using the diversity of members as a strength.

1. A harder world for poorer countries

In a written statement to the World Bank and IMF Development Committee, Bank of Italy Governor Fabio Panetta, speaking for Italy's constituency, said geopolitical conflict and fragmentation disrupted energy, fertiliser and shipping in 2026, raising prices and denting confidence. Emerging and developing economies, with thin budgets and narrow energy supplies, suffer most, and development has stalled in several of them.

2. Priorities for the World Bank

The constituency backs the Bank's reforms, provided they deliver measurable results. It supports job-related training and labour-mobility skills partnerships, citing Italy's programmes with Tunisia and Ethiopia; health plans, African medicine manufacturing and rapid funding for epidemics such as Ebola; digital and energy investment so that AI, which the Bank's 2026 report says could add 0.8 points a year to developing countries' potential growth, spreads widely; and the extended climate plan, including a cautious return to financing nuclear power with the IAEA.

3. Money and governance

It welcomes the push to mobilise private capital through equity, local-currency loans and common standards that would make development projects an investable asset class, while keeping flexibility and countercyclical lending for the poorest and most fragile. It also backs longer share-subscription periods, a fair 2030 shareholding review, a strong IDA22 replenishment focused on Africa, and close monitoring of new procurement rules against subsidised bids. Italy highlights its own Mattei Plan, mining and coffee initiatives and support for Ukraine's reconstruction.

1. Why resilience matters now

Opening the Green Swan Conference in Manila, Banca d'Italia Governor Fabio Panetta said climate change has stopped being a distant threat: it already shapes economic and financial conditions. Cutting emissions remains essential but cannot remove physical risk, and some damage is now unavoidable, so resilience must be built through three tasks: understanding risks, sharing them and reducing exposure. The costs are visible in weaker productivity, lost capital and strained budgets, with extreme weather causing over two hundred billion dollars of direct damage in 2025, more than double the early-2000s level, and shocks that can also move inflation, hitting emerging economies hardest. Governments lead climate policy; central banks and supervisors should simply keep meeting their existing mandates in a changing environment.

2. Understanding the risk

Data on physical climate risk remain patchy in availability, quality and comparability, while hazards are local, arrive in bursts and become harder to predict from history as extremes change. That makes them hard to measure and price, and better information also steers capital towards the places needing adaptation most. Financial institutions should fold climate into credit, market, operational and insurance risk instead of treating it as a separate compliance task. Artificial intelligence can sharpen modelling, forecasting and early warning, but it cannot replace reliable data, sound models and human judgement.

3. Sharing and absorbing the risk

Much of the loss from natural disasters is uninsured, so households cannot rebuild, firms stop producing or default, governments pay after the event and the shock reaches banks. Properly priced insurance does more than compensate: it rewards prevention. Yet cover is hard to expand, because people underestimate risk, premiums can be unaffordable and some markets are thin. The answer is a layered system: private insurers take smaller, frequent losses, reinsurers larger diversified ones, and public backstops handle extreme events while keeping prevention incentives, an approach developed under Italy's 2024 Group of Seven presidency and reaffirmed this year. Catastrophe bonds can widen the capital base, and Italy has introduced compulsory cover against floods, earthquakes and landslides for non-farm firms, with a public backstop. Premiums must stay affordable and reflect risk.

4. Reducing exposure through adaptation

Prevention matters most where exposure is high and fiscal room is thin, because rising debt limits adaptation spending and weak adaptation worsens public finances, a climate-debt spiral. Adapting is cheaper than rebuilding repeatedly, yet it is badly underfunded in emerging economies, held back by few investable projects, uncertain regulation and weak institutions. Governments should build resilient infrastructure, set planning standards and publish hazard information, while development banks use guarantees and blended finance to draw in private money. Technology helps with forecasting and monitoring, but growing data centres raise demand for energy, water and raw materials.

5. Conclusion

Understanding, sharing and reducing risk reinforce one another, and no institution can deliver them alone: governments, insurers, businesses, development banks and central banks each have a part, and international cooperation is essential because shocks cross borders. The aim is for economies to absorb climate shocks without them turning into wider crises; preparing for the future starts with building resilience now.

1. Why growth matters

At a Brussels forum of bankers and employers on 7 October 2026, Eurogroup President Kyriakos Pierrakakis argued that Europe, despite its wealth, skills, single market and large savings, is growing too slowly. Faster growth means better jobs, wages and public services, and lets firms invest in machines, digital tools and AI. It has also become a matter of geopolitical strength, as Europe must fund defence, energy security, critical technologies and infrastructure.

2. The financing gap

With an ageing workforce, growth must come from productivity and therefore investment, estimated by Mario Draghi at around EUR 800 billion more each year. Public budgets cannot cover it. The paradox, he says, is that Europe has ample savings but a financial system still split along national lines, so many firms cannot raise capital to grow. The Savings and Investments Union aims to link those savings to productive firms across the single market.

3. Banks and the unfinished Banking Union

Because banks still provide about 70% of business finance and are vital for small firms, he says the savings union cannot succeed without completing the Banking Union. European banks are now sound and helped absorb recent crises, but the market remains national: barely 16% of loans to euro-area companies are made across borders, and rules still trap capital and liquidity inside countries. He describes this fragmentation as a hidden levy on scale, investment and innovation, made more costly by technology: large US banks spend more than twice as much on IT relative to assets.

4. Three priorities and the political challenge

He calls for integration (fewer barriers to cross-border mergers and to moving capital within groups), trust (crisis management, funding for banks being wound down and a step forward on a common deposit guarantee) and competitiveness (simpler, more proportionate and consistent supervision rather than looser rules), while keeping room for strong regional banks serving small firms. The economics are well understood, he says; the obstacle is political, as each country guards its own safeguards. He sees the Eurogroup's role as building trust and compromise, and stresses urgency because investment and AI decisions are being made now.

1. Twenty-five years of the anti-money laundering law

Abdul Rasheed Ghaffour, Governor of Bank Negara Malaysia, used a compliance conference to mark 25 years of Malaysia's 2001 anti-money laundering act. He credits progress to repeated legal amendments, coordination bodies such as the national anti-financial crime and scam response centres and the national fraud portal, five national risk assessments, and supervision of more than 27 000 reporting entities, which earned a positive international evaluation in 2025. Results he cites: about RM1.9 billion of fraudulent transfers blocked in the first half of 2026, more than in all of 2025, and over RM37 billion of assets recovered in five years.

2. New threats

He sees two pressures. Geopolitical fragmentation is changing payment routes and trade corridors and straining cooperation, so it must feed into risk assessments. Technology is accelerating crime: AI-made fakes of voices and faces make scams harder to spot, around 95% of online fraud involves victims tricked into sending money themselves, and INTERPOL estimates AI-driven fraud is several times more profitable than older methods. Detection, he argues, must be automated as fast as deception.

3. Data and collaboration

The central bank, as financial intelligence unit, is investing in data-driven analysis. A pilot of the national fraud portal has flagged over 1 600 suspicious accounts that may be used as money mules, and new policy documents tighten technology risk management and banks' accountability for fraud. Banks and the payment network plan warnings that alert customers before a risky transfer is completed, with a pilot targeted for the first half of 2027, accepting some extra friction. He wants a shift from reacting to preventing fraud, more structured information sharing between firms and with the state, and stronger cross-border cooperation, ending with a call to anticipate, monitor, use technology responsibly and act jointly.

1. A vital ecosystem

At the tenth ACPR-AMF Fintech Forum, his first as governor, Emmanuel Moulin says financial technology firms, now more than 1 200 with about 55 000 jobs in France, drive the sector's dynamism and have matured into a mix that includes fifteen billion-dollar companies. The aim is now to help them scale. Funding rose 51% in the first half of 2026 but remains fragile and needs more European equity, which the Savings and Investments Union should supply through pension and retirement savings, venture partnerships, accessible household products, financial education, a common 28th company regime and a proper European framework for market infrastructure and post-trade.

2. Two guiding principles for supervisors

First, balance innovation with trust through proportionality, synergy with existing processes and technology-neutral rules that keep competition fair. Second, keep a regular, demanding dialogue with the whole ecosystem, since newcomers and incumbents, whether rivals or partners, jointly strengthen Europe against big tech. Tools include a Fintech Charter and the ACPR's innovation unit, and contacts from project leaders have risen sharply in 2026.

3. Challenge one: tokenisation

Faster settlement and lower costs come with stability and sovereignty worries, notably reliance on foreign infrastructure and settlement assets denominated in other currencies. The response has three pillars: central bank money for the digital age, with the digital euro for the public, the wholesale ledger service Pontes launched on 21 September and the longer-term Appia ecosystem; homegrown tokens issued by commercial banks, including deposits and euro stablecoins, pushed by a new Paris strategic group and illustrated by a project settling short-term paper with central bank tokens by end-2026; and regulation, with a targeted revision of the crypto-asset rules and a permanent pilot regime with ceilings near 300 billion euros.

4. Challenges two and three: AI and fragmentation

Nearly eighty percent of fintechs use artificial intelligence, which brings risks for access to credit and insurance, opaque decisions and cyber threats, illustrated by the summer attack on a developer platform. The digital resilience rules and the AI Act, which the ACPR will enforce for high-risk systems from December 2027, provide a base, but frontier models will likely need stronger rules. Geopolitical fragmentation exposes reliance on largely non-European cloud, models and computing capacity, so Europe must foster competitive homegrown players, a goal supported by the Commission's technology sovereignty package. Innovation must go hand in hand with confidence, and Europe should fund and build technology rather than merely import it.

1. Thirty years of an invisible backbone

Marking 30 years of FAST, the electronic system Bank Negara Malaysia uses to issue and auction debt and money-market securities, Governor Abdul Rasheed Ghaffour recalled that it replaced a paper process and became a pillar of the local bond and sukuk market. He argued that market infrastructure, though unseen, is what lets savings reach productive investment.

2. What it made possible

The market has grown to about RM2.35 trillion by mid-2026, among the region's largest in local currency, and companies raised over RM377 billion through bonds between January 2025 and June 2026. Sukuk now make up more than 60% of the market, with over RM1.4 trillion outstanding, and Malaysia issued the first sustainable and responsible investment sukuk in 2015 and the first green sukuk in 2017. The system also kept markets working through stress and the pandemic.

3. The next generation

Because AI, investor expectations and interconnected markets are changing finance, the central bank is building FAST+, meant to be smarter (analytics and risk monitoring), better linked across issuers, investors and regulators, and open to tokenised and programmable instruments without sacrificing safety. With a new securities depository system soft-launched on 25 September 2026, it will support issuing, settling and holding tokenised bonds and sukuk.

1. A new president's first annual meeting

Opening the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank's 11th annual meeting in Doha, President Zou Jiayi noted the bank now counts 111 members, has approved over USD 79 billion for more than 400 projects in 43 economies and keeps top credit ratings. After visiting more than 30 members, including a ride on a rapid-transit line near Delhi that the bank helps fund, she said members consistently ask for more infrastructure and more financing.

2. Plans for the next decade

The bank aims to roughly double yearly lending to about USD 20 billion by 2030, focusing on climate resilience, renewables, digital networks, regional links, nature and social infrastructure, while drawing in more private capital. It will move closer to clients, open more offices, engage earlier in project preparation and offer more local-currency financing, with integrity and high standards as guiding principles.

3. Cooperation

She presented development as a shared agenda among equal partners, noted Asia needs some USD 3 trillion of infrastructure investment a year, and said the bank will keep its Asian focus while staying open to members from other regions.

1. Poland as an example

At an international finance conference in Warsaw marking 20 years of Poland's financial supervisor, ESMA Chair Verena Ross traced how Polish capital markets were built from scratch three decades ago through new laws, infrastructure and supervision. The Warsaw exchange now lists over 400 companies, is the largest in Central and Eastern Europe, and foreign investors make up nearly three-quarters of trading, which she credits to bold privatisation and market policies, EU membership and its common investor-protection rules, and strong national oversight that turned those rules into local confidence.

2. Europe's weaknesses

EU reforms on listing rules, company data access, consolidated trading data and settlement in one day from October 2027 help, but she points to fewer listings, more delistings, limited investment capacity and fragmentation that some estimate has cost trillions of euros of output. Retail and institutional investment remain too small to meet Europe's long-term needs, from defence spending to the climate and digital shifts, which also means lost opportunities for savers: Polish households save about 10% of income and invest about 5%, well below EU averages of roughly 15% and 9%. Earlier reforms, however successful, are therefore not enough, and she calls for renewed ambition.

3. The integration package

She welcomes the savings and investments union and its market integration and supervision package, which could be the most important market reform since the post-crisis era. EU-level supervision would suit truly pan-European players such as large trading venues, clearing houses, securities depositories and crypto firms, provided the criteria are realistic and ESMA works closely with national authorities while having the means to act independently. Common rules must produce common outcomes, which requires convergence tools and consistent supervision, plus cooperation arrangements tailored to each sector that avoid duplication. The package would also harmonise trading rules, allow trading groups to operate under one licence, link securities depositories through a hub model with standardised connections, and make the pilot regime for distributed-ledger infrastructure more usable so that tokenised markets can grow beyond trials.

4. Simpler rules

She stresses lighter reporting for firms and funds, an easier path for retail investors and risk-based supervision, noting Poland's supervisor has also removed national add-ons. Safeguards must stay, but the system must become leaner and more agile, combining national expertise with European ambition.

1. Opportunity and risk together

Speaking to EU finance ministers in Dublin, Georgieva said Europe must grow faster to keep its social model and should use the current leap in technology to do so. The gains come from reinventing products, processes and workflows, not from the technology alone, and AI's pace punishes hesitation. Europe has to sit inside the whole value chain, as provider, builder and adopter, yet it now trails the United States, China and several Asian suppliers.

2. Four channels of impact

In the short run the AI building boom is a positive demand shock that lifts growth and inflation, amplified by its appetite for energy. Later it becomes a supply shock: global potential growth could rise by roughly a tenth to eight tenths of a point a year, with Europe aiming for the upper half; the inflation effect depends on timing and on whether labour disruption erodes consumer demand. It could touch up to sixty percent of jobs in advanced economies, widening polarisation and hollowing out the middle. In between lies a period of maximum risk, since disappointment tends to come first and frontier models may outrun oversight.

3. Financial stability

An AI-led market correction ranks among the risks taken most seriously. Rising leverage could force selling, circular financing between investment, debt and revenue commitments could reverse, and large cross-border holdings of American shares would spread losses worldwide. Supervisors must make sure the system can withstand that test.

4. What Europe should do

Europe will have to build AI as well as adopt it. It ranks well on readiness, with seven of the top ten countries, but firms face bank-dominated finance, heavy regulation, some of the highest power prices in the world and narrower adoption than American firms. Five priorities follow: patient risk capital and a pan-European venture industry, together with a rethink of taxation as income shifts from labour to capital; an energy union and data centres sited where power is cheap; the optional 28th corporate regime to ease entry and exit; smoother job transitions through retraining and protection of workers rather than posts, citing Finland and Denmark; and a state that leads by adopting AI and building digital public infrastructure. Europe's AI rulebook looks prescient, but guardrails only matter if there is something to guard, so competitiveness must be preserved.

1. A race for crypto leadership

Addressing a Solana Policy Institute summit in Washington, SEC Chairman Paul Atkins framed the moment as a choice between building the future of finance in America or ceding it abroad. He presented the agency's Project Crypto as a rule-by-rule effort to make the country the world's crypto capital, and urged Congress to pass the CLARITY Act, adding that the administration will act with or without it.

2. Three proposals

First, the proposed Regulation Crypto Assets would let founders raise money using digital assets under clear securities rules; the main feedback asks when an investment contract ends once promised work is done. Second, transfer-agent rules left untouched for about forty years, written for paper certificates, are proposed for modernisation toward tokenised shares. Third, staff are drafting a proposal that would let advisers and regulated funds hold crypto, including self-custody where no qualified custodian exists and through state trust companies.

3. One architecture and a warning

Atkins presents these as three pillars of one framework covering the whole life of a digital asset: its creation, its trading, its transfer and its safekeeping. Citing a Jefferson line about institutions keeping pace with the times, he warned that failing to adapt would send blockchain finance's best advances overseas, and promised clarity while staying within the SEC's statutory mission.

1. A lesson from the 1870s

Speaking in Vienna, Christine Lagarde recalled the Gründerzeit before 1873, when European savers financed the technologies of the day, the Suez Canal and, in far larger sums, American railways, in what Hobsbawm called the age of capital. After the 1873 crash, the assets and the growth stayed on American soil, and America overtook Europe while Europe stagnated for two decades. Today European savers are again funding the defining technology, AI, mostly in the US: about 440 billion euros of American tech equity sits in euro area household portfolios. She asks whether Europe will capture a fair part of the gains this time.

2. Why Europe must adopt fast

Europe is doing better than its reputation: euro area firms will put about 10% of investment into AI in 2026, AI-related borrowing explains about a quarter of business credit growth in the first quarter, and worker use has doubled in two years to over half. Yet US digital investment grew twice as fast, and US workers use AI two to three times more. Speed matters because ageing strains the social model, over 100 billion euros a year of public investment needs are unfunded, and the working-age population is set to fall by over a million people annually, so only faster productivity growth can pay for it; ECB estimates say quick adoption could raise productivity by up to 4% within a decade. Europe also bears the cost of the boom regardless of whether it captures any gain: US hyperscalers issued over 100 billion dollars of bonds last year, lifting long-term yields that euro area rates follow.

3. Why importing is not enough

Unlike in 1873, the companies are now built elsewhere: the US produced 59 notable AI models last year and China 35, France and the UK one each, and the US hosts three quarters of AI computing capacity against Europe's 5%. AI dependence differs from earlier technologies for three reasons. Data: a model reads a firm's data, so its supplier could learn what an industry knows and compete with it, and nearly half of firms that rejected AI cited data protection. Access: AI will soon screen goods, audit tax returns, dispatch trains and clear payments, so cutting or changing access would hit every sector at once, a leverage no trade partner has held. Frontier: in pharma, finance and defence a small edge in capability brings outsized gains and winner-takes-all dynamics. Europe thus faces a choice between holding back and forgoing growth, or adopting quickly and losing economic freedom.

4. Building sovereign capacity

Her answer has three steps. Build far more computing capacity, since Europe's data-centre gap could grow more than sixfold in a decade and the new gigafactories will fill only a fraction. Develop good-enough open models running on European infrastructure, building on Mistral and a San Sebastián firm's compressed model, because the best open models today are Chinese and their terms can change. And secure access to the frontier by being indispensable in the supply chain, as ASML is, while innovating to find the next link, since rivals will try to replicate it. She also warned that a correction in the US AI boom would reach Europe through investment funds exposed to US tech, a task for supervisors, though banks are well capitalised.

5. Capital: more of it, and a different kind

All this comes back to capital. Closing the data-centre gap could cost up to 600 billion euros, and the US has drawn on bonds, private credit and securitisation while Europe leans on banks. New models need patient equity; Mistral's record raise last week is one round of the many needed. Europe's households save about 1.4 trillion euros a year, so the savings and investments union is what lets those savings be deployed at home. AI, she argues, can be the project that drives European capital markets forward, as railways did in the US.

1. A world of repeated supply shocks

In an interview during a visit to Mumbai, BIS General Manager Pablo Hernández de Cos said recent central-bank strategy reviews share one conclusion: geopolitical tension and supply disruptions have become more probable. Over six years the world has absorbed the pandemic, the war in Ukraine, tariffs and now conflict in the Middle East. Such shocks push growth down and inflation up, so central banks must look at medium-run effects, stay focused on price stability and watch second-round effects on core inflation and expectations, while recognising they cannot solve everything alone. Growth has so far held up, helped by AI investment and exports. For resilience he sees a three-step approach: inventories in the short run, diversification of suppliers in the medium run, and technology, such as alternative energy sources, in the long run.

2. An AI boom that may not last

He warned that AI investment shows signs of becoming unsustainable, for two reasons: a race for market share breeds overinvestment, and spending increasingly relies on debt and leverage, including murky private lending vehicles and circular financing. A bust matters because AI has been a main pillar of recent resilience, supporting investment, wealth-driven consumption (notably in the US) and exports in some Asian economies; a reversal could hit all three, amplified by financial channels. On jobs, AI can complement or replace work depending on the task and sector, so retraining and active labour-market policies are essential, especially in developing economies.

3. Cooperation, cyber and regulation

On access to frontier technology, scale economies point to concentration in a few countries and firms, so global cooperation is needed to spread the benefits, and because financial stability is a global public good. AI-enabled cyber capabilities help defenders and attackers alike, and an incident can spread across borders, so coordination is the only effective response. He judged the bigger regulatory danger to be divergence between countries rather than slowness, and held up India's work on fast payments and data privacy as a good example.

4. Stablecoins and tokenisation

Stablecoins fall short of what money needs: exchange one-for-one with central-bank money cannot be assured when crises hit, and worries about integrity, fragmentation and interoperability remain. Because they are mostly dollar-based, wide adoption could threaten emerging economies' monetary sovereignty; the answers are international coordination on rules and, at home, good policy that builds trust. He backs two paths: tighter stablecoin regulation, and tokenisation inside the traditional two-tier system, with tokenised bank deposits and central-bank reserves. Project Agorá, on wholesale cross-border payments, now enters its second phase.

1. Demand, investment and trade

Speaking at the Global Fintech Fest in Mumbai, BIS General Manager Pablo Hernández de Cos organised his remarks around three questions. AI is already reshaping the global economy. On demand, it has triggered an investment boom in data centres, chips, cloud and hardware, and its optimism keeps financial conditions loose, supporting consumption through wealth effects. The five biggest tech firms alone plan over a trillion dollars of AI spending across 2025-26, and industry expects global AI investment to rise from about 500 billion dollars to 3-4 trillion by 2030, increasingly financed by debt and private credit. Trade is affected too: prices of AI-related goods have risen while other export prices stayed flat, so economies high in the supply chain, such as Taiwan, Korea, Malaysia and Singapore, gain, though narrowly (five Korean firms made 43% of export earnings), while heavy buyers of equipment lose terms of trade.

2. Productivity and jobs

On supply, task-level studies show productivity gains of 10 to 65% from generative AI, strongest for less experienced workers, and published estimates centre on roughly half a point a year added to productivity growth, with early evidence that better-prepared economies grew productivity faster. For work, AI both complements and substitutes. Informal workers in developing economies, with least protection and training, are most exposed; displacement so far is limited but emerging in customer support, programming and administration, and nearly 80% of firms discuss automation plans. His lesson is to prepare people through reskilling, not to resist the technology.

3. Divergence between economies

Advanced economies are likely to gain more in the short run because finance and professional services weigh more there and AI preparedness is higher. But emerging economies differ widely: China and parts of the Middle East are very well prepared, many low-income countries lag, and India, with its digital public infrastructure, has a real chance to close the gap. AI production is a five-layer chain (chips, cloud, data, foundation models, applications) with high fixed costs and scale economies, favouring a few giants in the US, China, Taiwan, Korea and the Netherlands. Smaller economies face a trade-off between building national capacity for resilience and wasteful duplication; many can focus on local applications, models for local languages and domain data.

4. Central banks and financial stability

The mandate is unchanged, but AI makes the economy harder to read, making it harder to pin down how much the economy can produce and where neutral interest rates sit. The BIS sets out three long-run scenarios: a bounded productivity boost, explosive self-improving growth, and a demand bottleneck in which displaced workers, as lost consumers, eventually starve the spending that supports innovation; in the last, the natural rate first rises, then falls below pre-AI levels, with inflation following. Financial-stability worries include cyber risk, which tilts towards attackers, and the investment boom itself: valuations are concentrated, spending exceeds cash flow, and circular financing among chipmakers, cloud firms and AI developers is opaque. An arms race risks over-investment, as in the canal, railway, electrification and dot-com episodes, and households now hold more equity, so a correction could hit consumption harder and spread globally. He does not say a bust is inevitable but urges caution. Benefits will depend on infrastructure, skills, competition, data governance and institutions; for central banks, the premium rises on measurement, judgment and cooperation.

1. Why payments matter, and what is new

Speaking at Jackson Hole, Managing Director Kristalina Georgieva argued that faster and cheaper cross-border payments are worth pursuing because high costs and curbs on correspondent banking push activity into informal channels and hold back trade in digital services, including AI. Domestic payment innovation has already helped poorer households, but cross-border progress is uneven. Many projects now link national systems, from the ECB's instant-payment platform to schemes in Southeast Asia and southern Africa and a project at the BIS. Whether private ledger technology can transform this at global scale is unknown, yet tokenization and stablecoins may make global finance more fluid, spreading risks faster and raising the price of policy mistakes.

2. Regulation must be coordinated

Her first argument is that these instruments need an internationally coordinated response: strict and ideally harmonized rules on reserve pools so coins can always be redeemed at par, the same rules for similar instruments to limit arbitrage, protection against excessive loss of bank deposits since banks fund households and small firms, and modernization where activity has drifted to lightly regulated nonbanks. Cooperation on data, legal frameworks and interoperability is essential.

3. Emerging markets need stronger buffers

Stablecoins can facilitate tax evasion, currency substitution and leakage around capital controls, which still shield about a quarter of IMF members, some of which also rely on financial repression. Central banks should supervise domestic stablecoin intermediaries and build larger foreign exchange reserves, while governments broaden tax bases and cut primary deficits, even though appetite for consolidation is weak after generous support.

4. Issuer countries and fiscal discipline

Countries whose assets back stablecoins, above all the United States, can tap a pool of roughly fifteen trillion dollars held abroad and may lower funding costs, perhaps at others' expense, but such savings are marginal and no substitute for sound policy. Benchmark yields in the United States, France and Japan are at multi-decade highs and lift curves worldwide. Central banks must protect price stability and not rescue public finances through lower rates or asset purchases; the remaining answer is fiscal choice between lower spending and higher taxes, without further delay.

5. Closing note

Technology tends to knit a fragmented world back together, and she is confident cross-border payments will eventually change, provided the right conditions are set to capture the benefits and manage the risks.

1. A fragmented world needs private capital

Speaking at a BRICS finance side event in India on mobilising private capital, New Development Bank President Dilma Rousseff described a world of imbalances, tariffs, sanctions, high rich-country debt and climate urgency, with development needs in digital, energy, cities and infrastructure too large for any single actor. The aim is to create conditions for long-term institutional and private capital to flow into development; the NDB, a bank of and for the Global South without conditionalities, builds that bridge through better bankability, longer maturities and local-currency and swap solutions.

2. Funding, financing and preparation

On funding, the bank is a large issuer in China's Panda bond market, is growing in South Africa, and plans a rupee bond programme of about 250 billion rupees (2.5 billion dollars) over five years, taking planned India investment to 7.5 billion. On financing, it targets 30% non-sovereign lending now and 35% in 2027-31, with 40-50% in local currency, 45% for climate and 10% for innovation and digital projects, co-financing 20-30% of projects and adding guarantees, risk-sharing, project bonds and equity, backed by stronger credit appraisal. On preparation, it will help build bankable projects and act as a knowledge hub.

3. India and closing

India has about 10.5 billion dollars approved across 35 projects, including anchor investment in the National Investment and Infrastructure Fund and a hybrid renewable energy project. She closed by saying that mobilising private capital is about trust, partnership and delivery.

1. A lower inflation target

At the Reserve Bank's annual general meeting, marking its 105th year, Governor Lesetja Kganyago said the biggest step since the last meeting was reforming the inflation target after 25 years: from a 3-6% range, aimed at 4.5% since 2017, to 3% plus or minus one point from 2025, in line with peers. An oil shock pushed headline inflation up to 4.5% in May, then 5% a month later, and the bank raised rates to 7% in May, then held in July; before the shock its model pointed to about 6%. He gives no promises on the rate path, but says lower inflation brings lower rates, and long bond yields near pre-war levels show markets expect the shock to pass.

2. International and technology issues

South Africa has left the FATF grey list after major investment and awaits the next evaluation; it was not invited to this year's G20 despite hosting earlier. On AI and stablecoins he sees both opportunity and threat, defends common crypto rules within the country's capital-flow controls so the playing field is level, and says payments modernisation without tokenisation can still deliver cheaper, faster payments, with a 50% stake in BankservAfrica bought and rebranded PayInc.

3. A strong balance sheet

Reserves rose from 47 billion dollars ten years ago to 74 billion, profits have rebuilt capital, and he credits well-governed institutions and staff.

1. The savings and investments union

Speaking in Frankfurt for the EU's Irish Presidency, Bundesbank President Joachim Nagel urged action on two files. First, the savings and investments union: Europe relies on outside venture capital, especially in later-stage rounds, though its high savings could finance its own scale-ups. He backs the One Europe, One Market Roadmap, with a single EU-wide company form, updated securitisation rules and a market integration and supervision package to be adopted this year; he welcomes more centralised supervision of securities and non-banks, with proportionate design and a role for central banks, and suggests a 28th regime for digital securities to reduce national fragmentation and strengthen the euro's international role.

2. Sovereignty in payments

The euro is the world's second most important currency, and holding that position takes broad capital markets, stability-oriented monetary policy and modern payment infrastructure that keeps working even in an emergency. Yet non-European firms such as Mastercard, Visa and PayPal dominate, a dependence as risky as in defence or AI. Europe needs its own digital ecosystem anchored by central-bank digital currency for both wholesale and public use. The digital euro would work in stores, online and person to person and give private innovators a European base. Trilogue talks began last week, a pilot starts in mid-2027 and launch is still planned for 2029. Europe, he concluded, works only when it works together, not just through a national lens.

1. A turbulent world

Addressing the heads of foreign missions at the Reserve Bank, Governor Lesetja Kganyago noted that since the last such dinner in 2019 the world has seen a pandemic, the Ukrainian and Middle Eastern wars, a major inflation surge and an AI boom, yet his 2019 worries, eroding multilateralism and pressure on central bank autonomy, remain. The global economy has proved resilient thanks to the AI-driven investment boom, loose fiscal policy, continued openness to trade without a retaliatory tariff spiral, and emerging markets, which grow near 4% and now make up over 60% of world output.

2. South Africa's re-rating

South Africa has had rating upgrades from Fitch and S&P, left the FATF grey list, seen six straight quarters of growth, ended load-shedding, and is expected to stabilise public debt this year, with long-term yields down over 300 basis points. The new 3% inflation target replaces the 3-6% range, though a supply shock forced a May rate rise and survey expectations rose even at long horizons, a reminder of why the bank acted to avoid getting stuck above target. The real economy has yet to show the gains, but he expects growth to return after fifteen lost years, and urged trust and multilateralism.

1. Praise for Côte d'Ivoire and the national plan

Speaking in Abidjan as a group of advisers on raising money for Côte d'Ivoire's 2026-2030 national plan was launched, African Development Bank President Sidi Ould Tah thanked the host country for housing the bank and praised President Ouattara's transformation of the economy: average growth above 6% over a decade, controlled inflation, fiscal consolidation, a better business climate and major infrastructure. The 2021-2025 plan delivered gains in infrastructure, access to electricity and water, agriculture and inclusive growth despite shocks. The new plan has six pillars covering peace, agriculture, private investment, people and jobs, infrastructure and climate resilience, and governance, with priorities of industrialisation, jobs for young people and women, and a green transition.

2. The bank's commitment

Guided by its four cornerstones and the New African Financial Architecture, the bank pledged to help mobilise resources across public projects, private initiatives and public-private partnerships, using lending, guarantees, private capital instruments and technical support.

1. Four paradoxes

Addressing the IMF and World Bank African Caucus in Banjul, African Development Bank President Sidi Ould Tah thanked The Gambia for its reforms and its early pledge to the Fund's seventeenth replenishment, the largest ever, and described Africa as a rising growth frontier with twelve of the twenty fastest-growing economies. He named four paradoxes: size without influence (18% of people, over 30% of mineral reserves, but about 3% of trade and output); financing (over 400 billion dollars a year needed while over 4 trillion sits in African banks, pension funds and insurers); opportunity (only about 6% of global investment inflows, held back by perceived risk and a guarantee gap near 50 billion dollars); and fragmentation (intra-African trade of 16% against nearly 60% in Asia).

2. The four cardinal points

The bank's strategy answers each: mobilise capital at scale by leveraging and de-risking; consolidate Africa's more than 100 small development finance institutions under the New African Financial Architecture; harness the demographic dividend through skills, jobs and support for small firms, since 60% of people are under 25; and build resilient infrastructure and local value addition, instead of exporting raw materials and importing them refined. The Senegambia Bridge shows how recycling an asset's value attracts institutional investors.

3. Four messages

To African governments: he praised debt management efforts and a South African-led borrowers' club, and urged support for turning the continental guarantee agency ATIDI into a larger pan-African mechanism, where the bank has multiplied its stake fivefold. To the IMF: after three successive shocks, Africa needs flexibility, fresh concessional resources and more channelled special drawing rights, citing research that each dollar spent on conflict prevention can save up to 103. To the World Bank: continued support for IDA and joint initiatives. To all partners: trade and investment rather than aid, delivered with speed, scale, synergy and shared prosperity.

1. AI as a lever for productivity

Opening a conference with the European Investment Bank, Bank of Italy Governor Fabio Panetta said AI has already entered production, services, research and daily life, with new agent models and portable devices lowering costs and speeding adoption. Broad and timely diffusion could revive Italian productivity, especially in manufacturing, where it can prevent equipment failures, cut waste, optimise energy and materials, speed design and improve quality, and also in medicine through faster diagnosis and new treatments.

2. Managing the transition and financing it

Because the pace of change is high, the transition must be prepared: invest in skills, support the most exposed workers and avoid concentrating benefits in a few firms, sectors or regions, in the spirit of calls by Pope Leo XIV and President Mattarella that AI serve people and the dignity of work. The investments it needs are largely intangible, such as research, software, data, skills and organisation, which are risky and slow to pay, so long-term lenders, venture funding and broader capital markets are essential. Italy and Europe have savings, research and firms but too rarely bring them together at the scale required.

1. Why small firms matter

Opening an MSME Day event in Kochi, Reserve Bank of India Governor Sanjay Malhotra said micro, small and medium enterprises are about 90% of businesses worldwide and half of jobs; in India they produce 31% of GDP, about 35% of manufacturing output and close to half of merchandise exports, supporting over 320 million livelihoods. A financial system that serves its smallest and most numerous participants poorly, he said, is not serving the economy.

2. What the RBI has done

He listed measures: priority-sector classification with a sub-target for micro firms; collateral-free loans, with the limit doubled from 1 million to 2 million rupees; wider credit-guarantee cover with zero risk weight on the guaranteed portion; the receivables discounting platform TReDS; simpler working-capital norms; priority-sector recognition for co-lending; the Account Aggregator, which supported about 3.5 trillion rupees of lending in 2025-26; and a ban on prepayment charges on floating-rate loans to individuals and small firms. Town halls, banker training and empowered committees keep the dialogue going. Bank credit to the sector reached 36.79 trillion rupees, growing about 15% a year over five years against 13.7% for all credit, though he admitted the gap is not closed.

3. Unified Lending Interface and expectations

The Unified Lending Interface should do for credit what UPI did for payments, letting lenders assess a borrower with consent-based digital data such as tax filings, bank statements and utility or land records instead of weeks of paperwork, which helps firms with thin credit histories. He asked financial institutions to invest in the public digital stack, accelerate scheme delivery and treat small firms as long-term partners, not regulatory obligations. He asked entrepreneurs to invest in technology and innovation, use the available platforms, register on the free online Udyam portal to access government schemes, and build trust through formalisation, digital adoption and financial discipline. The RBI promises to keep building the rails and reducing friction.

1. A museum to explain the central bank

At the opening of the renovated Reserve Bank campus and its new museum, in the presence of President Ramaphosa, Governor Lesetja Kganyago said the aim is to open the institution to the public as it nears its 105th anniversary. Central banks can seem distant, and trust grows when people understand how institutions work, so the museum should explain the bank's role and dispel myths: that prisoners counted the money, that notes are printed abroad, that gold bars are hidden in the building. It is also a keeper of memory, with exhibits tracing the region's economic history from barter through colonialism and apartheid to democracy, objects dating back 75 000 years, three centuries of coins and a working 134-year-old minting press. School visits and the monetary policy schools challenge aim to inspire future central bankers, and a game lets visitors set the rate.

2. Art, location and renovation

The museum shows the bank's art collection of more than 1 200 works to the public for the first time, in rotating shows including one on everyday workers and one on women artists. He thanked staff and partner museums. The bank chose to stay in Tshwane, within sight of the Union Buildings and close to the Treasury, as a practical and symbolic commitment to renewing the inner city. It is the first major renovation of the head office in over forty years.

3. Commemorative coins

He announced a series of circulating commemorative R2 coins on education: one for the 1976 youth uprising, one for the 125th anniversary of Charlotte Maxeke's degree, due in August, and one for the thirtieth anniversary of the Constitution, due in December with an R5 coin combining the three themes. Through the museum the bank hopes to strengthen accountability so that even unpopular decisions are debated within its constitutional mandate.

1. Two challenges at once

Opening with the medieval Champagne fairs, where merchants cleared debts on paper rather than shipping silver, Christine Lagarde said Europe's first common market faded when tolls rose and sea routes opened. Today two challenges arrive together: technology, above all tokenisation, is rewriting how money and trades settle, and geopolitics has made owning financial infrastructure a matter of power, so sovereignty counts. For Europe she sees an opportunity to cut fragmentation in capital markets and open retail payments to pan-European operators.

2. Wholesale markets and retail payments

In wholesale markets, 32 central securities depositories keep records across the Union against two in the United States, and tokenisation on a shared ledger would record ownership once and settle payment simultaneously. But it needs a risk-free settlement asset: more than 60 market participants said they will not issue digital assets at scale without settlement in the central bank's own money, so the Pontes project will settle tokenised transactions this year, and Appia is drafting a blueprint for a single European tokenised market. In retail, the digital euro would keep public money available as cash fades, and because it would be legal tender accepted everywhere with open standards, it could break the vicious circle that has stopped European card schemes reaching scale: international schemes handle over 60% of card payments and 13 of 21 euro countries lack a national scheme.

3. Cross-border payments and the euro's role

Cross-border payments remain slow and costly, a gap dollar stablecoins want to fill; the Eurosystem is linking its instant payment system TIPS with others, including India's UPI. Deep integrated markets anchored in public money would make the euro more attractive to global users, but this needs market investment and shared standards, and governments must provide a common legal framework for digital assets so that national rules do not rebuild the fragmentation technology is dissolving.

1. Brazzaville and a listening tour

Opening the African Development Bank Group's 2026 annual meetings in Brazzaville, its President thanked the Congolese head of state, praised his decision to lift visa requirements for all Africans from 2027 and highlighted the Congo Basin as one of the planet's major carbon sinks. A year after his election, he said he had spent his first months consulting governments, staff, investors and young entrepreneurs, and heard one message: Africa's ambitions now exceed the financial system meant to support them.

2. Three paradoxes

Africa has about 18% of the world's people, over 30% of its mineral reserves and over 60% of unused farmland, yet only about 3% of world trade and 3-4% of output. It needs more than $400 billion a year for structural change while holding over $4 trillion in domestic savings. Infrastructure alone requires $130-170 billion a year, with a gap of $68-108 billion, despite major openings in energy, logistics, digital networks, food and critical minerals. The issue is converting assets into investment, jobs and influence.

3. A changed world

The pandemic, wars, imported inflation, falling aid and higher interest rates have strained African economies, but the continent has become central to trade routes, energy and minerals. IMF projections show African growth comparable to Asia's, digital tools and the continental free trade area are widening markets, and young entrepreneurs use AI in farming, health and education. Their innovations still struggle to scale because finance has not kept pace.

4. A new financial architecture

Fragmentation means African savings rarely fund African projects; investors buy instruments, not projects. The NAFAD framework backed by the Abidjan Consensus aims to align existing institutions to mobilise savings, reduce perceived risk and deepen capital markets, without adding bureaucracy. He insisted that financial sovereignty is built through stronger markets and coordination rather than declared, and that the bank, created for an era of sovereign loans and aid, must adapt to a world shaped by private capital, technology and regional integration. The bank's strategy follows four priorities: cheaper and larger capital flows, stronger connected financial systems, turning a young population into an economic advantage, especially for youth and women, and building infrastructure and value chains so Africa stops exporting raw materials and importing prosperity.

5. From lender to catalyst

The African Development Fund's 17th replenishment raised a record $11 billion, up 23%, with 24 African countries contributing about $183 million, twenty for the first time. Only one project in ten reaches financial close, so guarantees and risk sharing are key; the bank became the largest shareholder of the regional trade and investment insurance agency ATIDI with 14%. Twelve to fifteen million young people join the labour market each year, and small firms in the missing middle need patient finance, energy and skills. All African financial institutions must work together.

6. Reforming the bank

Seven reform pillars should make the bank faster and simpler, moving from single projects to integrated platforms, and a Portuguese-speaking service hub will be created. He argued that Africa's risks are overestimated and its value underestimated, joking that Africans recycled and shared taxis long before these became fashionable business models.

1. Resilient markets and the integration package

Speaking at the ICMA annual conference in London, ESMA Chair Verena Ross said that despite geopolitical volatility and a clouded outlook, capital markets have stayed resilient, which matters because they stabilise economies, while Europe needs deep, integrated markets to finance a competitive, low-carbon economy. ESMA fully backs the savings and investments union and the market integration and supervision package. Trading and post-trading remain fragmented along national lines; a proposed pan-European trading venue regime would let operators run several venues across member states, and the many securities depositories raise settlement costs and complicate cross-border deals, so connections between hubs, reciprocal links, T2S participation and clearing interoperability would help. For key pan-European infrastructures, centralised supervision would be more consistent and give a clearer view of risk, and ESMA, with fifteen years of experience, says it is ready, though building the capability will be a challenge.

2. Deeper markets, technology and simplification

She cited the EU consolidated tape, now taking shape, to improve transparency, and the move to one-day settlement on 11 October 2027, aligned between the EU and the UK, for which everyone should prepare. Tokenisation could streamline issuance, trading and settlement, embed compliance and give supervisors real-time tools, and the DLT pilot regime shows it working; the package should improve it without creating new fragmentation. Finally, accumulated detailed and duplicative rules create complexity, so ESMA is simplifying the policy framework, focusing supervision where risks are highest and reviewing reporting under market, derivatives and financing-transaction rules to report once and use many times.

1. A resilient year, then a new shock

In his concluding remarks on the Bank of Italy's annual report for 2025, the Governor noted that world output grew 3.4% in 2025, half a point above forecasts, despite wars and US tariffs. The United States grew over 2%, pushed by AI investment in data centres and by stock market gains that lifted consumption. China grew 5% by cutting export prices and finding new markets, a strategy that fails to address domestic deflation and invites protectionism. Easier monetary policy also helped. Markets showed signs of excess: high valuations, thin risk premiums, a search for yield in opaque segments, and rallies in gold, bitcoin and private credit, some of which reversed in 2025-26. The Gulf conflict then changed everything. Hormuz normally carries a fifth of global oil and LNG; its blockade lifted oil prices everywhere and gas prices in Europe and Asia but not in the United States. Fertiliser prices jumped, which will raise food prices early next year and could push tens of millions into extreme poverty. Inflation and short-term expectations are rising, and markets expect central banks to react, lifting rates at all maturities.

2. A fragile outlook

Energy costs cut household incomes and company margins, higher yields tighten financing and public debt limits support. Assuming a quick end to the conflict, the IMF expects world growth of 3.1% in 2026 and inflation of 4.4%; a longer war would be worse. Damage to energy infrastructure, high shipping and insurance costs and persistent uncertainty will weigh on spending. He stressed that today's risks are more numerous, more interconnected and harder to govern than before. Investors first fled to safety, lifting the dollar and pulling money from emerging markets; shares have since recovered, perhaps underestimating the damage, while rising long-term yields signal continuing tension. With heavy public debt and growing non-bank fragilities, small shocks can spread widely.

3. Trade and fragmentation

World trade grew 5% in 2025 as flows were rerouted and tariffs ended lower than announced; roughly half of the extra goods traffic was linked to AI equipment. Tariffs did not shrink the US goods deficit, as about 90% of their cost fell on American consumers and firms, while China's surpluses grew. The IMF warns that lasting barriers could slow trade growth below 3% in 2026. Governments rightly seek economic security, but indiscriminate fragmentation would raise costs, weaken supply chains and undermine cooperation, harming the citizens it aims to protect. The post-war rules-based system governed tensions for eighty years; its erosion through uneven rule enforcement, distorting industrial policies, imbalances and unequal gains must be addressed, and ties with countries that respect shared rules strengthened.

4. Global imbalances

Current account imbalances in 2025 reached their widest since the 2008 crisis. About two-thirds of all deficits are American, the result of large public deficits and low household saving; roughly a third of all surpluses are Chinese, since its model holds back consumption and favours exports; Europe's surplus reflects its difficulty in turning savings into innovative investment. America's net external debt equals about 90% of GDP. Large surpluses push global real rates down, encouraging risk-taking and borrowing, while deficit countries face sudden jumps in risk premiums. The energy shock may narrow imbalances temporarily but not their causes. A lasting fix requires a smaller US budget deficit, stronger Chinese consumption with less distorting industrial policy and more currency flexibility, and much more investment and a fully integrated single market in Europe; coordinated, the IMF estimates these steps would lift world GDP by 1%. Unmanaged imbalances tend to end in trade conflict, as before the 1985 Plaza Accord, or in financial crises, as before 2008.

5. Artificial intelligence and work

AI is spreading faster than earlier technologies. Five large US firms control about three-quarters of global computing power, most frontier models are American, China is catching up and Europe lags; yet the biggest gains usually go to those who adopt a technology, not those who invent it. AI is improving factory design, maintenance and logistics and speeding up drug discovery. For the first time it can perform highly cognitive tasks, but past innovations also created new occupations: six in ten US workers today do jobs that did not exist eighty years ago, and cheaper products can expand demand. The transition will hurt workers unable to switch and may widen inequality, so adoption by small firms, skills training and protection for exposed workers are essential. Work itself will change: in some jobs AI will assist people and free them for higher-value tasks, in others the human role will centre on interpreting results, exercising judgement and ensuring reliability, the parts automation cannot replace.

6. Europe: slower growth and the policy response

Euro area growth was 1.4% in 2025, about 1% excluding Ireland, held back in Germany and Italy by manufacturing hit by Chinese competition, while households kept saving. Inflation returned to 2%, allowing a 100 basis point cut in rates. Since March, confidence has dropped to 2022 levels, services weakened and banks tightened lending. ECB March projections showed growth of 0.9% in 2026 and inflation of 2.6% in the baseline, but a prolonged conflict could subtract a point of growth over two years and push inflation above 6%. Conditions are better than in 2021-22: rates are near neutral, demand is weaker, expectations are anchored and wages calm. Still, firms plan price rises and consumers expect more inflation, so the stance may need recalibrating to prevent a wage-price spiral; the June decision would depend on new projections, with no predetermined path. Acting in a timely and measured way, he said, protects household purchasing power, business confidence and the basis for durable growth, and the calibration would depend on how far energy costs filter into the wider basket and how strongly they depress spending and investment.

7. European policy gaps

Europe enters this unstable period with unresolved weaknesses that limit its growth and global weight. It faces dependence in defence, energy and technology and an incomplete single market in finance, energy and telecoms. Initiatives under the Competitiveness Compass, such as the Industrial Accelerator Act, a common European company form and the grids package, could help, but fewer than half of the planned proposals have been presented and under a quarter adopted. AI plans are delayed too, although the EU has rules, a strategy, investment programmes, rich industrial data and strong research; no call for tenders for AI gigafactories had been published by mid-May. Long negotiations, diluted compromises, uneven national application and unspent resources must be overcome, as credibility depends on delivery. Europe's savings flow abroad because capital markets remain national; beyond the savings and investments union, he called for a common European bond backed by shared fiscal capacity to provide a safe asset, fund common projects and strengthen the euro.

8. Italy: resilience but weak productivity

Since 2019 Italian GDP has risen over 6%, better than the euro area per person, driven by investment and exports, employment has risen strongly, and the country's net foreign position, deeply negative a decade ago, has turned positive at 15% of GDP, helped by prudent public finances. Growth slowed to 0.5% in 2025 as real wages lagged and Germany struggled, and the Gulf war may bring stagnation. Output per hour in the private sector has grown only 6% since 2000, against 13-34% in other large euro economies, while the working-age population is shrinking. Recovery plan spending exceeded €100 billion over 2021-25, about 30% of investment, adding nearly a point to annual growth and speeding up public tenders; private firms, which hold ample own funds, must now invest more in innovation and intangible assets.

9. AI adoption, skills and energy in Italy

About 30% of Italian firms use AI but only 5% intensively, below EU averages; adoption could add 0.2 to over 1 point a year to labour productivity, enough in the best case to offset demographic decline. He warned against repeating the 1990s, when slow adoption of information technology held back productivity for decades. Small firms face upfront costs, skill shortages, legal uncertainty and data protection concerns, and individual firms ignore the benefits that spread along supply chains, so he proposed stronger technology transfer, support for start-ups and venture capital, public procurement of innovation, AI in public administration and clear EU rules. Only 30% of people in their thirties hold a degree, 20% of young adults without a degree are out of both work and education, twice the rate elsewhere, more than 100 000 graduates emigrated in 2020-24 and education spending is a point of GDP below the EU average, a vicious circle of weak demand for skills and weak supply. Energy imports transfer wealth abroad; efficiency has improved, renewables reached 41% of electricity, grids are being expanded and new nuclear technologies deserve study, while support measures should stay temporary and targeted.

10. Banks and conclusion

Italian banks are profitable and well capitalised; smaller lenders are weaker, and recent problems at a few stemmed from poor governance, handled without contagion, and the exit of the weakest lenders has strengthened the sector. Large banks are spending on technology at levels comparable to European peers, while digital services attract younger customers; the Bank of Italy is attentive to less digitally skilled customers exposed to exclusion and scams. Mergers can help if competition, especially locally, is preserved, bringing Italy's banking structure closer to that of other large European countries and diversifying revenues; the five largest groups hold 68% of assets, less than in most peers. Lending has recovered but publicly guaranteed loans, over a fifth of business credit, should return to their targeted role, and equity finance must grow. IT incidents at banks rose 80% in 2023-25 and cyber incidents doubled; AI tools able to find system flaws quickly require stronger governance and DORA implementation. Recalling the 1946 choice of the Republic and of an open, rules-based world, he urged Europe to act together, Italy to invest in technology, skills and debt reduction, and governments to steer AI so that it serves people and gives young generations opportunities. Rules agreed at global level should protect competition, pluralism and the dignity of work, and success will be measured by the chances offered to young people to use their skills, be rewarded on merit and stay in the country.

1. Thanks and strategic direction

Closing the bank's annual meetings in Brazzaville, President Sidi Ould Tah thanked the Congo's president and people for the welcome and praised the presidential dialogue as a political highlight. He said the strong support received for his reform agenda is now the compass of his mandate, that results exceeded expectations, and that the week set in motion dynamics of action, transformation and integration, with Africa at a turning point and the free trade area as its macroeconomic instrument.

2. Concrete results

He saluted the Congolese president's decision to lift visa requirements for all Africans from 1 January 2027 as a step moving integration from words to reality. A session on the Congo Basin's blue fund drew nearly three billion dollars in pledges, a historic first, for 17 countries. A meeting with civil society, philanthropists and the diaspora stressed women's empowerment, youth jobs, support for small firms and universal access to basic services. Angola confirmed 6.5 million euros for the seventeenth African Development Fund, bringing African contributors to 25 and over 190 million dollars. Quoting a Congolese poet, he said the continent's question mark is becoming an exclamation mark of ambition, confidence and action.

1. Africa as the next growth engine

At the Africa Forward Summit in Kenya, Georgieva called Africa the place where the world will find its next growth engine, but in a world of widening imbalances: export-led economies squeeze room in supply chains, big deficit countries absorb a large share of capital, and the sharpest gap is demographic, with capital in ageing societies and growth potential in young ones.

2. What countries should do

Africa should use its own savings better and attract the vast global pools of equity and bond savings that now avoid the fastest-growing regions, through credible policy, action against corruption and less red tape. Removing trade barriers under the continental free trade area could raise income per head by over ten percent. Unsustainable debt should be restructured or reprofiled, unproductive borrowing avoided and financing moved from debt towards equity through deeper capital markets.

3. What the IMF does

Concessional lending to Africa has risen from eight to thirty-six billion dollars, helped by channelling reserve assets, and programmes are run as partnerships. The Fund is reforming the debt architecture, has added a third African seat on its board and is pushing for fairer representation. Good policies pay: closing half the gap with emerging markets in regulation and governance could raise sub-Saharan output by up to twenty percent within a decade.

1. Uncertainty as the new normal

At a Bangkok conference on Asia in 2050, Georgieva said the new Middle East conflict, whose regional and global effects the IMF is quantifying, puts energy security and confidence at stake for most of Asia. Uncertainty is now the permanent condition rather than a passing phase, so governments and firms need strategy, financial strength and above all agility, and should concentrate on what lies within their own control.

2. A golden quarter-century

Since 2000 the region built policy frameworks, financial oversight, reserves and trust, which brought stability, low inflation, investment, private-sector growth and poverty reduction on a vast scale. Asia now produces two-thirds of global growth and nearly forty percent of world trade.

3. First challenge: productivity through AI

AI could add up to eight tenths of a point to annual growth in Asia, provided large public and private investment in digital infrastructure and skills, fewer regulatory barriers, deeper stock and bond markets and sensible guardrails. Singapore tops the IMF's preparedness index, China and Korea lead in adoption, India is democratising access and Japan uses robotics; several Southeast Asian economies and Korea have out-of-court debt restructuring.

4. Second challenge: people

AI will not help everyone: middle and entry-level jobs are most at risk, which matters for young people, so workers must be taught to keep learning. Asia will age faster than any region, with the number aged over sixty-five doubling by 2050, yet conditions differ: Japan is old, China and Korea are ageing quickly, India, Bangladesh and parts of Southeast Asia stay young, so some need higher participation and others more jobs.

5. Third challenge: trade and integration

Openness can be a weakness, but trade finds a way around barriers, and Asia can act alone through regional integration: lowering nontariff barriers could raise regional output by about 1.8 percent in the long run. She urged an ambition beyond trade agreements, towards an internal market like the European one, helped by Asia's lead in digital payments, which will feature at the Annual Meetings.