JICA President Akihiko Tanaka, left, takes part in an event sponsored by the Brookings Institute.

JICA President Akihiko Tanaka visited Washington, D.C., Oct. 10 and 11 for the International Monetary Fund and World Bank annual meetings. There he held talks with attendees and spoke at formal events.

One major theme of the forum, announced forcefully by World Bank President Jim Yong Kim, was organizational reform at the World Bank to achieve the World Bank Group's two major strategies of ending extreme poverty by 2030 and promoting shared prosperity. The spotlight was also on another theme, stressed by IMF Managing Director Christine Lagarde, of building a global economy that brings prosperity over the next generation amid the emergence of such new risks as population aging and inequality.

Tanaka met separately Oct. 10 with Nigerian Finance Minister Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala, Indonesian Finance Minister Chatib Basri, and other prominent figures. He and Okonjo-Iweala discussed new projects for Nigeria, among other things. In Basri's talks with Tanaka, he explained macroeconomic policy and requested cooperation on infrastructure investment necessary for sustainable growth.

On the evening of Oct. 10, Tanaka joined a panel discussion with the title "Leveraging New Sources of Finance for the Public Good" held at the International Finance Corporation. The event included a dialogue on how developing countries should mobilize private funding to promote improvement of the public good. The lively discussion included the Colombian Finance Minister, representing developing countries; JICA, the International Finance Corporation and Multilateral Investment Guarantee Agency, representing the public sector; and representatives from the financial sector. Tanaka pointed out the need to create a framework to bring in funding in the development fields of urban development, education, health care and agriculture, regardless of country or sector. He also stressed that official development assistance (ODA) is useful for reducing the risk and costs of development projects when creating that framework.

And on the afternoon of Oct. 11, Tanaka also took part in a panel discussion called "Supporting Fragile States: The Role of Inclusive Growth" at the Brookings Institute. He gave examples of JICA's cooperation in Afghanistan, South Sudan, Myanmar and other countries, and talked about JICA's "Inclusive and Dynamic Growth" initiative in fragile states.

At the same time as the IMF and World Bank meetings, the general assembly of the International Development Finance Club (IDFC) was held. The IDFC is a network of renowned national and subregional development banks of which JICA is a member. At the general assembly, a discussion took place on the direction of cooperation related to green finance among member agencies. U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon hurriedly attended the meeting and expressed hope for the IDFC's contribution to realizing a scaling up of climate change finance.