By DPA
Paris : Newly elected International Monetary Fund (IMF) head Dominique Strauss-Kahn has said that reform of the organisation should include reducing its costs and integrating developing nations more profoundly in its workings.
At a press conference in Paris, the former French finance minister said Monday that reducing IMF staff was one of the options to make it more cost-efficient.
“There is no reason that this institution cannot be more efficient, more relevant and less costly,” he said.
Strauss-Kahn also said that integrating emerging economic powers in the workings of the IMF was essential to making it more relevant.
Strauss-Kahn was named the IMF managing director Friday, succeeding Spaniard Rodrigo de Rato.
In an interview published Monday in the daily Le Monde, Strauss-Kahn said that the IMF must go beyond being “a ‘gendarme’ who lends money to countries in difficulty in exchange for adhering to rules that are too strict”.
He also said that the world’s geopolitical reality has changed since the IMF was founded. “Emerging countries — China, India, Brazil, South Africa or Mexico — want to have more influence. They are right.”