IMF chief: India pitching for Emerging Market candidate

New Delhi: China has not indicated it would support French Finance Minister Christine Lagarde for the International Monetary Fund’s top job, India’s IMF representative said on late Wednesday.

France’s government has said China would back Lagarde, who announced her candidacy on Wednesday, hours after Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa criticised EU officials for suggesting the next IMF head must be a European.

The Chinese Foreign Ministry has declined to comment.

“There is no such communication to us from the Chinese ED (executive director) on these lines,” Arvind Virmani, India’s executive director at the IMF told Reuters in an interview.

“Obviously I am not privy to any private communication between the Chinese and the French governments.”

In the first joint statement issued by their directors at the IMF, Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa – the emerging economic powers known as the BRICS – said on Tuesday the choice should be based on competence, not nationality, and called for “abandoning the obsolete unwritten convention that requires that the head of the IMF be necessarily from Europe.”

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Sources in New Delhi have said India is talking with other emerging countries to build support behind a common candidate from a developing market to head the IMF.

The BRICS countries, thus far, have failed to identify a consensus alternative candidate. Virmani, former chief economic adviser to India’s Finance Ministry, said India would be open to supporting a candidate even outside the BRICS, if no consensus is reached.

“Clearly if there is no such consensus by the time nominations close on June 10, we will have to take a decision on which available candidate to support based on their merit, their inclination for independent thought and even-handed action, and motivation to reform the governance and quota structures of the IMF to reflect global economic reality,” he said.

Emerging economies are trying to use the contest for the top IMF job to push reforms at the global financial institution, as the United States and European nations jointly have power at the global lender to decide who leads it.

“If there is no substantive change in the rules procedure and approach adopted in the past, then non-European candidates would merely be competing for second place,” Virmani said.

REUTERS