Mission Statement
- From left to right, front row: Raja’a Al -Behaisi (Office Manager), Mohamed Belhaj (Senior Economist), Mohamed Trabelsi (Senior Economist), Khaled Abdel-kader (Deputy Director), Paulo Drummond (Director), Nessrine Lotfi (Finance Officer), Alia Al- Duaij (Senior Course Administrator), Chiraz Labidi (Senior Economist), Mariane Nohra (Interpreter/Translator).
- From left to right, Second row: Nouf Abul (Course Administrator), Noura Al Khalifah (Course Administrator), Rasha El Askary (Senior HR/Office Administrator), Shaikha Al Sulaiman (Course Administrator), Nouf Al -Mazidi (Course Administrator), Sunil George (Senior IT Officer), Rana Khalil (Office Administrator), Samia El -Sayed (Interpreter/Translator), Basil Awad (Economics Analyst).
- From left to right, back row: Nezar Haggag (Senior IT Officer), Samer Al- Sourikh (Supervisor- Al- Shaheen Technical Contracting Company), Ali Al-Qallaf (Course Administrator), Jassim Al -Saadoun (Security Staff- Al -Shaheen Technical Contracting Company), Hossam Abdullah (Support Services Liaison), Wael Baqtash (Senior Liaison Officer), Muhannad Darwish (Program Officer), Hossam Aboul Fotouh (Interpreter/Translator), Ahmad AlDousari (Economics Analyst).
CEF Mission Statement
1. The International Monetary Fund’s Middle East Center for Economics and Finance (IMF-CEF) is the IMF’s regional training center for Arab countries, hosted and funded by the State of Kuwait. It started operations in 2011 and was officially inaugurated in 2014.
2. The IMF-CEF provides hands-on policy-oriented training programs in economics and finance for Arab officials, in collaboration with bilateral and multilateral partners as well as country authorities from across the Arab countries. The Center also organizes conferences and seminars to discuss cutting-edge and emerging policy topics of relevance to Arab countries.
3. Our Vision: To be a center of excellence in economics training and capacity building and a knowledge hub for the Arab countries.
4. Our Mission: To help Arab countries strengthen human, institutional, and technical capacities to design and implement macroeconomic and financial policies needed to address economic challenges and promote high, sustainable, and inclusive growth.
5. The IMF-CEF provides a regional approach to capacity development to better tailor support to regional priorities. In doing so, the Center coordinates very closely with stakeholders on the ground, aligns its training program with policy needs of member countries, and fosters peer-to-peer learning.
6. The IMF-CEF covers a diverse base of Arab countries—resource-rich oil exporters, middle-income and emerging economies, low-income countries, and fragile states. The Center’s training program aims to target and address the specific needs of the various member countries subgroups.
7. As an economics training center for the Arab countries, the IMF-CEF is unique in four ways:
First, it is fully integrated with other capacity development (CD) providers in the IMF and with the IMF’s broader lending and surveillance activities. In the case of Arab countries, the IMF’s Middle East and Central Asia Department (MCD) identifies CD needs and priorities across sectors in each country, in close consultation with country authorities and the IMF’s CD Departments. These needs and the associated strategic objectives are fully informed by the IMF’s policy dialogue with country authorities. The resulting Regional Strategy Note and Country Strategy Notes set out medium-term CD agendas for the region and for each country. In turn, these agendas guide the design of the IMF-CEF training program. The Center also coordinates closely with the Middle East Technical Assistance Center (METAC) in Lebanon and other Technical Assistance (TA) providers to ensure complementarity to the overall TA program and other trainings available from the IMF.
Second, the IMF-CEF is uniquely positioned to mobilize and leverage the wealth of knowledge and experience in economics and finance from the IMF, to the benefit of Arab countries. It does so by tapping into the IMF’s accumulated experience of about 75 years of economic policy consultations and advice across its membership. The Center complements its regional courses and workshops, as well as other learning activities, with the IMF’s online courses, training courses at the IMF’s headquarters, and a well-thought-out series of conferences and seminars.
Third, the IMF-CEF collaborates with bilateral and multilateral partners to the benefit of Arab countries. The IMF is the principal training provider for the Center in the area of economics and finance. Other training, outside the core areas of expertise of the IMF, is delivered by partner organizations such as the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD), the World Bank (WB), and the World Trade Organization (WTO). The CEF also partners with the Arab Monetary Fund (AMF) for training in Abu Dhabi (United Arab Emirates) and other Arab countries, and with Bank Al-Maghrib (BAM) for training in Rabat (Morocco).
Fourth, the IMF-CEF is a leading institution offering policy oriented training in economics and finance in Arabic. While there are several global institutions that deliver virtual courses in English and other languages, the IMF-CEF is globally the primary institution that offers a comprehensive program of interactive virtual economics courses in Arabic to public sector officials in the region.
