LaGarde vows more UNCITRAL for emerging markets at the IMF

Director of the IMF Christine Lagarde holds a press conference at the headquarters, International Monetary Fund in Washington, July 6, 2011.

Credit: Reuters/Kevin LamarqueBy Lesley Wroughton

WASHINGTON. Wednesday, July 6, 2011 12: 45 am EDT

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Christine Lagarde, the IMF's new Chief, pledged Wednesday to go ahead with reforms to rapid growth in emerging markets than the global lender right-of-way.

At a press conference on his second day as the Monetary Fund International, Director General, Lagarde has recognized an array of the immediate problems of funds, including the European debt crisis, but she also said that it stressed the need for the IMF to change over time.

Institutions as the IMF must better reflect the changing balances in the global economy, it said, adding the idea of creating a first rank to the IMF to give better visibility in the emerging markets was not "a bad idea."

"The world will continue to change," she said. "We have these tectonic plates move at this time, and which must be reflected in the composition of the governance and employment fund.

LaGarde has won first place in the IMF after its predecessor, Dominique Strauss-Kahn, resigned in May to answer to charges of sexual assault against a hotel maid in New York. Strauss-Kahn denied the charges and the case appears to be ending on questions about the credibility of his accuser.

LaGarde has refused to comment on the situation of Strauss-Kahn despite repeated questions.

Questioning was sometimes difficult for this popular event, in part because of the drama surrounding its accession to the IMF. Some emerging markets wanted the job to go to one of their members, rather than carrying on business as a tradition of having a European head of the lender.

LaGarde, a Minister of finance French former who has trained as a lawyer for business, but not an economist, asked directly whether she was qualified to organize work, which, among other things, is whether the payment of the needy tens of billions of dollars to the country.

"I'm not going to boast my qualifications or lack of skills." "I believe that the truth of the pudding is in the food, as you say," Lagarde said. "We will see how it goes."

THE REFORM AGENDA

She said IMF member nations needed to complete the reforms agreed to in 2010 to give developing countries more power within the institution.

"But which should also reflect in our policies of employment, training policies, of how we build teams, how we organise recruitment so that the people are not clones of each other, Lagarde said."

LaGarde acknowledged that among the issues the more urgent that it must face is a crisis of European debt demanded of redemptions of Ireland, Portugal and the Greece. She confirmed that the IMF Board will meet Friday to consider a disbursement of funds for the Greece.

It said another sensitive issue was how to deal with the outbreak of capital flows to emerging markets that create the risk of bubbles and disrupt the foreign exchange markets.

While noting that the global recovery was unbalanced, she tried to sound a note of comfort that it was firmly in place.

"When you look at our growth forecasts for 2011, 2012, we are clearly on the rebound and things are improving and getting better compared with the situation in 2009 at the crisis, Lagarde has."

(Reporting by Mark Felsenthal, Pedro da Costa and Doug Palmer, written by Glenn Somerville, additional editing by Andrea Ricci)