1st Interview-IMF's Christine Lagarde

Independent Films, Politics, Women

With the announcement on June 28 that Christine Lagarde has been selected Managing Director of the IMF, the attention is now shifting to the priorities that await the first woman to head the institution since its creation in 1944.

“The financial crisis that hit the entire world, but most of the advanced economies back in the late 2008 has left scars, marks, and remains. We need to deal with that. We dealt with the crisis as a matter of emergency, and the Fund did very well under its previous management”, Lagarde said in an interview yesterday (5 July).

Lagarde was appointed yesterday for a five-year term following a month-long selection process that started on May 20 following the resignation of Dominique Strauss-Kahn.

A demanding policy agenda awaits Lagarde at the IMF’s headquarters in Washington D.C. The global economy is being buffeted by continued uncertainty in Europe, uprisings in the Middle East, signs of overheating in some fast-growing emerging market economies, and rising commodity prices that pose a particular challenge for low-income countries.

One of the uncertainties clouding the outlook is the continued sovereign debt crisis in Europe. The most acute problems are in Greece, where the government is trying to secure domestic political backing for a strengthened package of measures to put its economy on a more secure footing.

“We still have huge challenges ahead of us. You have sovereign debt issues in most of the advanced countries, most acute in a monetary zone called the euro zone, which I’m very familiar with, but it’s not the only one”, Lagarde said.

As finance minister of France during the global financial crisis, the 55-year old Lagarde was very familiar with the problems faced by the euro area.

Lagarde took office as the IMF is beefing up its work on “spillover effects”, the impact that one country’s policies can have on other countries because of the tremendous increase in trade and financial linkages in the global economy. This work is part of the IMF’s efforts to further policy collaboration at the international level.

Directors:

• Muhamed Sacirbey (UNTV-IMF)

Producers:

• Susan Sacirbey (UNTV-IMF)