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International News Title: New role for IMF The International Monetary Fund (IMF) is planning urgent talks between the world’s leading economic powers over the coming months after the organisation’s biggest shake-up in four decades gave it new powers to avert the threat of a global crisis. The new role for the IMF heralds a drop in status for the G7 -- the gathering of finance ministers and central bank governors from the United States, Britain, Germany, Italy, France, Japan and Canada. The emergence of China and India in recent years has made the G7 unrepresentative of the new global economy and unable to offer solutions to global imbalances. Member countries moved swiftly at the weekend after the fund warned that strong growth in the global economy could be abruptly halted if financial markets took fright at the disparity between the US’s massive trade deficit and the surpluses built up by China and other exporting nations of Asia. In its biggest structural change since the break-up of the Bretton Woods system of fixed exchange rates in the early 1970s, the fund was given a mandate to conduct multilateral surveillance of the global economy and to suggest steps that the leading nations should take in concert to ensure better balanced growth. The surveillance unit will be modelled on the independent Bank of England, with guaranteed independence from political interference and an annual remit to look at the linkages and spillovers between monetary policy, fiscal policy, exchange rates and financial sector issues in key IMF member countries. Until now, the fund has only held bilateral discussions with individual member countries, but policy--makers said they wanted the institution to revert to its original role of ensuring global economic stability. Rodrigo de Rato, the fund’s managing director, said: “It will be an important vehicle for analysis and consensus building.” British Finance Minister, Gordon Brown, who chairs the IMF’s key policy-making committee, said: “We resolved to make the IMF more fit for purpose in a global economy, and more able to address challenges that are quite different from when the IMF was created.” De Rato believes the 7% trade deficit in the US is linked to the under-valued currencies of Asian countries such as China, and the slow growth in Europe caused by malfunctioning labour and product markets. He said: “There is clear agreement among the members that we are facing important and maybe increasing risks. We will start working immediately on how that process [of multilateral surveillance] is going to be established.” In its post meeting statement, the G7 stepped up pressure on China by naming it as one of the “emerging economies with large current account surpluses” that need to allow more currency flexibility. -- © Guardian Newspapers 2006 The background The IMF and the World Bank were born out of a conference at Bretton Woods, New Hampshire, in 1944. The idea was for a body that would help countries in short-term balance of payments difficulties in a world of fixed exchange rates, thus preventing macroeconomic crises. The World Bank was supposed to lend to developing countries to support growth. The breakdown of the fixed exchange rate system in 1971 and the increase in the flow of finance around the world, meant the IMF lost the ability to fulfil its original function, leaving it in search of a role.
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