Jeddah, KSA, 03.12.2015 – President of the Islamic Development Bank (IDB) Group, Dr. Ahmad Mohamed Ali on Wednesday inaugurated “IDB Group’s Evaluation Symposium”, aimed at further promoting the culture of bonding knowledge and practice within the IDB Group to advocate and promote focus on results.

In his opening remarks, Dr. Ali stated that “this Symposium comes at a critical moment when the international development community has just renewed its commitment to the 2030 agenda for sustainable development in the recent UN Summit held in September 2015, which adopted the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs)”. He highlighted that IDB Group’s strategic objectives are consistent with the SDGs.

Dr. Ahmad Mohamed Ali also stated that as the IDB Group plans to reach 44 million people with improved basic social services, create 1 million jobs, and increase the share of Islamic finance globally, among a wide array of other tangible targets, by 2025, organizational and operational effectiveness within the IDB Group has to be enhanced further.

Dr. Ali highlighted the measures taken to further promote result based management approach as well as organizational and operational effectiveness within the IDB Group. He stressed the commitment of the Bank to achieving the results set in the 10 year strategy, and urged all staff to embrace the result based culture more than ever.

The key-note speaker at the Symposium, Dr. Ahmet Tiktik, IDB Vice President for Corporate Services, stated that one of the main challenges to development is the mismatch between investments and services provided to meet the expectations of the citizens who are the main clients. He also underlined the importance of building strong partnership with the implementing agencies in delivering IDB Group’s 10-year strategic goals.