March 28, 2024

Debate Looms Over I.M.F.: Should It Do More Than Put Out Fires?

This year, Ms. Georgieva managed to create a special reserve fund of $650 billion to help struggling nations finance health care, buy vaccines and pay down debt during the pandemic.

That approach has not always sat well with conservatives in Washington and on Wall Street.

Former President Donald J. Trump immediately objected to the new reserve funds — known as special drawing rights — when they were proposed in 2020, and congressional Republicans have continued the criticism. They argue that the funds mostly help American adversaries like China, Russia, Syria and Iran while doing little for poor nations.

Ms. Georgieva’s activist climate agenda has also run afoul of Republicans in Congress, who have opposed carbon pricing and pushed to withdraw from multinational efforts like the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change and the Paris climate agreement.

So has her advocacy for a minimum global corporate tax like the one that more than 130 nations signed on Friday.

In July, Laurence D. Fink, who runs BlackRock, the world’s largest investment management company, and was at odds with the I.M.F.’s stance on Argentina, called the fund and the World Bank outdated and said they needed “to rethink their roles.”

The investigation into data rigging at the World Bank focused on what is known as the Doing Business Report, which contains an influential index of business-friendly countries. WilmerHale, the law firm that conducted the inquiry, said various top officials had exerted pressure to raise the rankings of China, Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates or Azerbaijan in the 2018 and 2020 editions.

Article source: https://www.nytimes.com/2021/10/09/business/economy/imf-mission.html

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