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Macroscope
Opinion
Anthony Rowley
Anthony Rowley

Macroscope | Are IMF chief Kristalina Georgieva’s troubles the result of darker forces at work?

  • Bad luck seems to go with the job of heading the IMF, particularly when it comes to boosting the organisation’s reserve currency function
  • Polarisation of influence within the IMF can only get worse as the US and China vie for global influence

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IMF managing director Kristalina Georgieva delivers a speech during the opening ceremony for the Floating Office where a high-level dialogue on climate adaptation takes place in Rotterdam, Netherlands, on September 6. Photo: AP
Anthony Rowley

Among the most “accident prone” people heading international organisations are managing directors of the International Monetary Fund (IMF) whose head Kristalina Georgieva is the latest to find herself in trouble. But is it really a case of accidents or are there deeper and darker forces at work?

Georgieva is accused in an “independent” report of pressuring staff at the World Bank (where she was CEO until she took the helm of the IMF in 2019) to alter data favouring China’s image in world business rankings. The World Bank was then seeking Chinese backing for a major capital increase.

Georgieva and her former World Bank colleagues have denied any wrongdoing and the IMF executive board has launched a formal review. Meanwhile, law firm WilmerHale is following up its first report with a second one addressing “possible misconduct of staff members” according to Reuters.

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If all this seems a little excessive over a matter of business rankings, the wider background to the attack on Georgieva’s professional integrity looks even odder. She may have committed another and more cardinal sin in the eyes of her critics in the United States.

Georgieva led recent successful efforts to push through a US$650 billion increase in the IMF’s allocation of what are known as Special Drawing Rights (SDRs). These represent the IMF’s own international reserve currency and can be exchanged for dollars or other currencies.

The Trump administration in the US had opposed the SDR issuance last year; the Biden administration approved it this year despite opposition from some Republican quarters.

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