As IMF managing director Christine Lagarde’s mandate enters the final stretch, emerging-market powers seem hesitant about teaming up to try to wrest the job away from Europeans.
The IMF managing director has said she is “open” to seeking another term when her time is up in July next year, while the so-called BRICS — Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa — seem divided about a power bid. Questioned on the topic, Moscow and Brasilia refused to comment. However, Pretoria seems to be already gearing up to contest the European leadership of the 70-year-old IMF, part of the tacit agreement with the US that has kept an American as head of sibling institution the World Bank.
“Developing countries have insisted on a merit-based selection process, not the current arrangement where the fund managing director is always a European,” said a spokeswoman for South Africa’s treasury department.
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Though the complaint is not new, it has so far failed to produce change. In 2011, the BRICS were unable to agree on a single candidate who would convey undeniable symbolic clout, leaving Mexico’s Agustin Carstens to pursue a losing battle against Lagarde.
It is an open question whether that would be different today.
“It’s too early to say. Let the situation become clear, which other candidates are in the race,” said an official at the Indian finance ministry.
“India might look to discuss with other nations like the BRICS,” the official said, speaking on condition of anonymity.
Chinese foreign ministry spokeswoman Hua Chunying (華春瑩) was circumspect.
“China has been in a good, sound, cooperative relationship with the IMF,” she said.
However, the situation has changed since 2011. The five big emerging-market economies have strengthened their cooperation with a constant goal in mind: To challenge the West’s grip on the Bretton Woods sibling institutions by creating their own monetary fund and development bank.
They chafe at their underrepresentation at the IMF, where the voting rights of China, the world’s second-largest economy, are not even a quarter of the US. An IMF reform that would slightly correct the imbalance has been languishing for three years.
Cracks have appeared within the 188-nation IMF itself. In July, the institution’s No. 2 official, David Lipton, told the BBC that it was “much more likely the next time around than it has ever been” that the next IMF chief will be a non-European.
However, the prospect of a common BRICS candidate faces a number of obstacles, according to experts interviewed by AFP.
A former IMF chief economist who currently heads India’s central bank, Raghuram Rajan, has the ideal profile, but he has torpedoed speculation.
“It’s not a job I have applied for,” Rajan told Indian broadcaster NDTV in an interview aired in September. “It’s not a job I am running for.”
Beyond the question of candidates, it would be tough to challenge Lagarde if she seeks another term because she has strong backing among the institution’s members, including the emerging-market economies.
“Ms Lagarde has broad support among the IMF’s membership,” said economist Eswar Prasad, former head of the IMF’s China division. “She has taken a number of steps to make the IMF more sensitive to emerging markets’ concerns and sought to increase their representation at senior levels of the IMF’s management and staff.”
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