On February 16, 2025, Governor Pan Gongsheng of the People’s Bank of China attended the Emerging Market Economies Conference co-hosted by the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and Saudi Arabia, and delivered a keynote speech.

Governor Pan highlighted that in recent years, many emerging market economies have significantly improved monetary policy frameworks, foreign exchange reserve management, and debt structures, which have substantially increased their economic resilience to external risks. Emerging market economies are now one of the key drivers of global growth, and are increasingly more visible and vocal on the global stage. He also noted that the current international landscape is undergoing profound changes, and a lot of uncertainties still lie ahead. Emerging markets also face challenges, such as geopolitical tension and economic fragmentation, rising protectionism, slower growth of the global economy in the medium term, financial market volatility and capital outflow pressure, and high public debt.In response to these challenges, emerging markets should further strengthen resilience by continuing to improve monetary policy frameworks, increasing exchange rate flexibility, strengthening public debt management, and improving macroprudential policies and financial regulation. At the same time, emerging markets should uphold multilateralism and pursue win-win cooperation. Emerging markets should foster South-South cooperation on a broader and deeper level, strengthen macroeconomic policy coordination, and jointly promote global economic growth and financial stability.

China stands ready to strengthen cooperation with the IMF to advance global financial governance reform. The IMF should step up support for developing countries by enhancing the effectiveness of its bilateral and multilateral surveillance and removing restrictions on trade, investment, and supply-side, so as to pursue fair and equitable global governance. The IMF quota realignment is critical for the IMF’s governance, representativeness, and legitimacy. The current quota shares can no longer reflect the actual position of emerging markets in the global economy, which requires the IMF to accelerate its quota realignment reforms.

On China’s economic performance, Governor Pan noted that the Chinese economy hit the 5-percent growth target in 2024. The policy package announced in late September last year has been particularly instrumental in boosting social confidence and economic recovery. Looking ahead, China will adopt a more proactive fiscal policy and an accommodative monetary policy, and will strengthen counter-cyclical adjustments. China will continue with the transformation of economic growth model, and strengthen the momentum of economic recovery.