(Washington) The Managing Director of the International Monetary Fund (IMF), Kristalina Georgieva, assured that she was “making herself available” to continue to lead the financial institution, in an interview with AFP, on the sidelines of a speech given on Thursday in Cambridge (United Kingdom).
“I’m not looking for people to choose me, I’m making myself available,” she said about her own succession, during an online interview, while European Union (EU) ministers ) gave him their support on Tuesday and the IMF formally launched the process of appointing its leader on Wednesday.
The process opened this Thursday with a call for applications, which can only be submitted by representatives of States on the Board of Directors of the Fund or one of its governors, most often representatives of central banks.
It should last until the end of April and is based on the principle of “open, transparent and merit-based selection,” said the IMF.
Secondly, the council will validate a list of selected candidates, from which the next general director will be chosen.
“I was extremely touched to receive the support of European ministers. This is my family, I worked for the European Commission for seven years. But I have also received some from emerging countries,” added Mme Georgieva.
For the outgoing general director, whose current mandate is due to end on September 30, there is no doubt that “if I have the pleasure of receiving the confidence of our members, I am ready to respond to it”.
Her speech could also be compared to a campaign speech, even if she insisted that she wrote it “before the process was launched, and even before the meeting of European ministers”.
The main point is the fight against global warming, which must not be abandoned even if it recognizes that “political decision-makers have had to face a multiplicity of shocks”.
“Give optimism a chance”
“We recommend that States rebuild their budgetary cushions to face future crises, but we tell them at the same time that there are necessary investments that must continue to be made,” recalled Kristalina Georgieva, insisting on the that climate investments fit this category.
But what role for the IMF in this race against climate time?
That of “remembering on the one hand that acting now is not only more effective, but also, in the long term, less expensive. And to provide the necessary data, to allow States to learn from each other, and to be this line of transmission,” detailed Mme Georgieva.
The general director took the opportunity to emphasize a point already discussed during the annual meetings last October, in Marrakech (Morocco): the development of the African continent.
At the time, she underlined the importance of Africa from a demographic point of view, the youngest continent, but faced with a lack of capital, an absence which slows down its development and the prospects of its population.
“We must find a way to combine Africa’s abundant human resources with the abundant capital available in advanced economies and major emerging countries,” insisted Mr.me Georgieva in her speech.
“The key is to attract long-term investors and stabilize trade flows,” she added.
She painted a rather positive economic portrait of the African continent, with an economy that “functions rather well, in particular due to the strength of its fundamentals and investments directed in the right direction, such as digital infrastructure”.
More broadly, the head of the Fund wishes to “give optimism a chance”, voluntarily placing herself in line with the “Letter to our grandchildren” by the British economist Milton Keynes, written in 1930.
“He emphasized that on the one hand there were revolutionary pessimists, who thought that everything was going wrong and that the system had to be destroyed. They were wrong. On the other hand, there were also the reactionary pessimists, who think that things are so fragile that they should definitely not be touched. They are also wrong,” she recalled.
“My objective, in the work of the Fund, is to provide the best possible recommendations in order to face the various external pressures and to do so in the most responsible way possible for future generations,” she concluded.