OMFIF is heading in new directions in June 2013 with a landmark seminar in Brasilia with the Central Bank of Brazil and a mission to China to explore the ramifications of Beijing’s monetary policy and its impact on the rest of the world. Both of these initiatives stem from the OMFIF decision in January to baptise 2013 the ‘Year of the Luso economy’, highlighting the importance of Portuguese-speaking nations for the world economy, and also as the ‘Year of renminbi focus’.
We welcome back to London Gerhard Schröder, the former German chancellor, who – even more than during his last visit in February 2012 – epitomises the new self-confident spirit of Germany as it seeks to maintain its competitive advantage in an ever more challenging world economic environment. Schröder, an initial sceptic about the single currency when the euro was introduced under his chancellorship in January 1999, launched the Agenda 2010 reform programme in 2003-05 which has made Germany an uncomfortably high-performing member in the otherwise struggling euro bloc. These three issues are inextricably interlinked. The freshly-revived bonds between older and newer Portuguese economic and business cultures around the world symbolise the manifold shafts of the world economy as one-time colonial powers now become increasingly reliant on flows of economies from formerly undeveloped economies progressing rapidly to a greater stage of industrial prowess. The strides made by China in economic and monetary modernisation are a sign of how the world’s second largest
economy – despite the trials of this year’s growth slowdown – is setting standards for international investment behaviour. And Schröder’s presence in London is a reminder of Europe’s need to stay on top of the reform process if the Old Continent