[stop-imf] IMF not ready to bow out

[Robert Weissman]

This is a very important story, suggesting the IMF is not at all ready to
follow Larry Summers' suggestion that it get out of the business of
long-term development lending.


World Bank Poverty Chief to Join IMF Amid Calls for Reform
Bloomberg
Washington, Jan. 25 

The World Bank's poverty chief will join the International Monetary Fund,
even as the U.S. presses for the IMF to abandon development loans and
focus on short-term lending to shore up government finances.

Masood Ahmed, a World Bank vice president, will take a new senior post at
the IMF in June working on poverty issues, the bank said.

Ahmed will be a ``central player'' in a new joint effort between the fund
and the bank on debt reduction, although he has no specific title yet,
according to IMF spokesman Bill Murray.

The move comes days after U.S. Treasury Secretary Lawrence Summers said
the Group of Seven industrial countries will take a ``comprehensive'' look
at how the IMF lends its money. The fund is trying to balance calls by the
U.S.  Congress and Summers that it concentrate on temporary emergency
lending.

``The fund was not originally intended to get involved in the economies of
the poorest countries,'' said Veena Siddharth, a senior policy analyst at
Oxfam International, an advocacy group.

Oxfam and other poverty-fighting organizations have criticized the IMF for
collecting debt payments from countries struggling to fund education,
health care and other basic services. That censure led the fund to set up
a program with the World Bank to forgive debt for countries like Mali,
Bolivia and Guyana in exchange for reforms.

Ahmed, who was not immediately available for comment, now runs the World
Bank's debt relief program. He will be succeeded at the World Bank by
Kemal Dervis, who works as vice president for the Middle East and North
Africa region, the bank said.