Syria is in a hurry to rebuild its war-torn economy and will not wait for the international community to begin making those changes, the country’s finance minister said Wednesday.

Mohammed Yisr Barnieh, who spoke at the International Monetary Fund in Washington, was part of Syria’s first delegation to the Fund and the World Bank’s semi-annual gathering of central bank governors and finance ministers since the Syrian civil war broke out in 2011.

Barnieh serves as finance minister in the country’s transitional government, set up earlier this year by Ahmed al-Sharaa after his Islamist forces ousted Syria’s long-serving strongman Bashar al-Assad.

Without the IMF and other international financial institutions, Syria “cannot move ahead,” Barnieh said. “But if you are slow, we will move withou

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