Kristalina Georgieva underlined on Friday the importance of international cooperation in trade, leaving calls for more focus on justice and fairness at a time when the world is experiencing serious disruptions in supply chains and traditional trade routes.

According to the newspaper Económico, the director of the International Monetary Fund (IMF) used Friday's panel on global trade as part of the institution's seminar to acknowledge that mistakes have been made in the last ten years by not giving greater importance to the issue of inequality, but calls for efforts to reduce friction in relations between countries.

"There could be a fragmentation that leaves us all poorer unless we act to eliminate or reduce these dangers," he said, after admitting that today's world is already "multipolar."

Georgieva argued that the orientation of countries "in blocks that negotiate among themselves without gaining economic efficiency, but for security reasons" would result in loss of wealth for all involved. On the contrary, and using the example of the great financial crisis that erupted in 2008, "when there is international cooperation, we get out of crises.

David Malpass, director of the World Bank and another of the panel's speakers, added that "the foundation of development is trade," but stressed the need to address market distortions created by some subsidies, which also contribute to tensions between countries and a trend toward greater protectionism.

Friday's panel also included Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala, director general of the World Trade Organization, and Matthias Cormann, secretary general of the OECD.