The International Monetary Fund and World Bank have moved their 2012 annual meetings to Tokyo in a show of support for Japan's efforts to recover from the nation's most powerful earthquake.

The Washington-based institutions said Monday the meetings were being transferred from Egypt, which had asked that they be moved because of political instability in that country.

Japan had sought to host the October 2012 event in order to demonstrate its hoped-for recovery from its devastating March 11 earthquake and tsunami, including the crisis at the Fukushima nuclear plant.

The IMF and World Bank, with 187 member countries, hold their annual meetings outside the United States every third year. The last time they were held in Japan was in 1964, the year of the Tokyo Summer Olympics which heralded the country's emergence as a developed country.