Remarks

I'm not going to speak a lot because I will not be very original, you know. I think you have gathered here very like-minded persons and so we are more or less agreeing on most of the issues. Next time we need to probably look for someone who disagrees, although it's getting more and more difficult which is a very good sign, that there's less and less people who are not into this sustainable and inclusive growth agenda. That was not the case 10 years ago, I have to say the IMF and other institutions were not fully aligned with this kind of approach so it's very good news.

So four very fast points:

First, Jeffrey Sachs was talking about financial flows and I was thinking that if we have learned one thing this year is that human health and economic health, go hand in hand and therefore I think that just as important as transferring money is transferring vaccines.

Spain has put forward a paper to the Social Summit that took place last week in Portugal and we are very supportive of ideas that would be creative, you know, exploring intellectual property regulation, looking into how to maximize the productive capacity of the world, looking for platforms to manage and to clear demand and supply, I don't know but what we are seeing in India is telling us that we should be creative really and scale up what we have been able to do until now.

My second point is on international awareness and international cooperation, and here I have to pay tribute to Kristalina and to other leaders that for the past year have really been railing the energy of all the countries to try to ensure that the way out of this crisis is very different to previous crisis and that we try to build back better, really, and to be in to be more mindful of the people and not only talking about banks and financial stability.

And in this regard, we have been and we are very supportive of reinforcing multilateral institutions and the new allocation of special drawing rights. But here, I have to agree with what Arturo was saying: I think that there are very poor people in middle income countries and we need to avoid that these middle income countries are drifting into the lower-income steer. And that requires to be a big broader in our approach than maybe what we would initially think when we're thinking about most vulnerable countries.

Third point is to strongly support the initiatives, which are on the table.

Ángel Gurría was here yesterday and I was very vigorously, supporting the work we are doing in the OECD for taxation. Also, with regards to Jeffrey's very interesting presentation, there are very important financial flows. Where are they going to? They're not going to the less developed countries, they are surely going to the digital ‘supergiants’. And that is one place where the money is going. That's for sure. And so, I think our societies are not going to accept that they are not subject to appropriate taxes so we're very supportive. And I think that the change in the administration in the U.S. is very good news.

And a final point just to emphasize the importance also of more developed countries to actually grow so that we can also be engines of trade and growth for the rest of the world. I hope that we continue to see the upward trend and that next time we meet it is to celebrate a strong recovery also in Good Old Europe, thank you.