IMF chief Rodrigo Rato heads for Asia next week in his first official trip since taking the helm of the fund, underscoring the region's key role in maintaining economic and financial stability.
His trip is also significant because his itinerary includes Japan, where a tentative economic recovery is taking shape after a decade of stagnation, and China, which is trying to reign in an overheating economy and stave off pressure to free its currency.
The respected former Spanish finance and economy minister, who took over as managing director of the IMF this month for a five-year term, will be in Tokyo on Monday and Tuesday and in Bei-jing the following two days.
He will also visit Singapore on June 25 and the next day go to Vietnam, which is facing an uphill task of qualifying this year as a member of the WTO.
Rato will meet with leaders and senior government officials of these countries and receive feedback on the IMF's effectiveness in dealing with challenges of the global economy, a fund statement said.
"It is rather encouraging that his first official trip is to Asia, which is very important, because in the past, my perception was that the IMF was more interested in Europe and America than affairs in Asia," said Edward Lincoln, a Washington-based senior fellow at the influential Council on Foreign Relations.
There is still considerable frustration in East Asia over mistakes the IMF made in containing the region's worst financial crisis in 1997 to 1998, he said.
"Probably many people will still agree that the IMF needs to understand more on how Asian economies operate," said Lincoln, an expert on the Japanese economy and US economic relations with Japan and Asia.
Rato has expressed his desire for Asia to enhance structural reforms and keep markets open.
In Japan, he is expected to advise the government not to change monetary policy, Lincoln said.
Japan, the world's second largest economy, has kept interest rates very low and expanded money supply to haul the economy out of deflation and induce growth, which the IMF forecast would hit 3.4 percent this year.
"The crisis seems to be levelling off but there's not much evidence of a return to positive price increases," Lincoln said.
In China, other analysts said, Rato might find it difficult convincing Beijing to adopt a flexibile exchange rate policy as its takes steps to contain runaway economic growth. The IMF has been urging China for sometime to adopt a flexible exchange rate regime to help reflect market conditions. The yuan currency has been pegged at 8.3 to the dollar for a decade.
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