Professor Lino Briguglio has been invited by the International Monetary Fund to act as keynote speaker at the upcoming high level conference on Pacific Island Countries, on the role of policies to lift the potential of growth, held in Vanuatu on 22 November.

 Prof. Briguglio, together with a research team at the University of Malta, has pioneered an approach to explain why some small states like Malta, have succeeded economically, in spite of their limited resources and high degree of exposure to external shocks.  The so-called Vulnerability and Resilience framework is now being used by various organisations, including the United Nations and the Commonwealth Secretariat, to assess the prospects of success or otherwise of small states.

The Vanuatu conference was attended by many finance ministers in the region, some of whom are also prime ministers, and by high ranking officials of the International Monetary Fund. Representatives of regional and international organisations also attended.