A/HRC/36/40 Annex V Statement by the Intergovernmental Group of 24 at the 2017 Spring meeting of the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund (excerpts) 1. We held our ninety-seventh meeting in Washington D.C. on April 20, 2017 with Abraham Tekeste, Minister of Finance and Economic Cooperation of Ethiopia in the Chair, Ravi Karunanayake, Minister of Finance of Sri Lanka as First Vice-Chair; and Julio Velarde, Governor of the Central Bank of Peru as Second Vice-Chair. Financing for Development 8. Strong fiscal frameworks are essential to mobilize domestic resources to effectively support development efforts. We are encouraged by the progress made in improving tax revenue-to-GDP ratios and enhancing spending efficiency in EMDCs. Progressive and growth-enhancing tax policies and expenditure measures also play an important role in improving income equality and broadening opportunity. We underscore the important role of IFIs and donors in supporting capacity building for revenue mobilization and encourage more peer learning and capacity building among EMDCs through collaborative platforms. We welcome the work of the Platform for Collaboration on Tax and look forward to its engagement with tax officials in EMDCs. 9. We welcome ongoing initiatives on international tax cooperation such as the Automatic Exchange of Information (AEoI) initiative and the Base Erosion and Profit Shifting (BEPS), and call for a framework that ensures effective participation of EMDCs. We support the development of a digital global platform with least compliance cost for implementation of AEoI. We appreciate the work of the UN Tax Committee and encourage multilateral support to upgrade the Committee to an intergovernmental body to enhance the voice of EMDCs on international tax policy matters. We also call for more attention to developing fair tax rules to guide the taxation of multinational corporations and for international cooperation to prevent harmful international tax competition, negative spillovers from shifts in tax policies in major countries, and illicit financial flows … Reforming the Bretton Woods Institutions 15. We support a quota-based, adequately-resourced IMF that is less dependent on borrowed resources. We call for the full implementation of the 2010 Governance Reforms on Board Representation. We call for the completion of the 15th General Review of Quotas, including a new quota formula, by the Spring Meetings of 2019 and no later than the Annual Meetings of 2019. We call for a revised quota formula that further shifts quota shares from AEs to dynamic EMDCs, reflecting their growing weight in the global economy, while protecting the quota share of the poorest countries, and puts greater weight to GDP PPP within the GDP blend. The realignment of quota shares must not come at the expense of other EMDCs. We reiterate our longstanding call for a third Chair for SubSaharan Africa, provided that it does not come at the expense of other EMDCs’ Chairs. 16. We look forward to a World Bank’s Shareholding Review that upholds the Istanbul Principles to achieve equitable voting power between developed and developing and transition countries (DTCs), and produces an outcome that is broadly acceptable to the membership, while protecting the smallest poor countries. We call for the timely implementation of the Lima Roadmap. As the review moves toward the conclusion of the new shareholding package, we call for exploring options to ensure a meaningful realignment with a balanced shareholding outcome, including allocations in line with the agreed formula, special allocations, forbearance, and limits on dilution of individual DTCs. 17. We reiterate our support for a stronger WBG to provide continued assistance to developing countries of all income levels, as laid out in its Forward Look. In the meantime, we are concerned with the IBRD’s and IFC’s strained financial capacity and the consequent 41