IMF Head Pledges Renewed Efforts to Protect Data Integrity | Business News

By MARTIN CRUTSINGER, AP Business writer

WASHINGTON (AP) – The embattled head of the International Monetary Fund, who successfully battled for her job following a data manipulation scandal, promised renewed efforts on Wednesday to strengthen data integrity while she focuses on her primary mission of helping countries move away from one devastating crisis to recover global pandemic.

IMF executive director Kristalina Georgieva said she was glad the 24-member IMF Executive Board had expressed confidence in her ability to run the 190-nation agency. The board investigated allegations that while at the World Bank, Georgieva pressured employees to improve the rankings of China and other countries in 2018 in an influential business climate report

“The Board of Directors has concluded that they have full confidence in my ability to run the fund and it feels great to be able to focus on the work ahead,” Georgieva said at a press conference to set the agenda for this week Annual meeting of the IMF and the World Bank to be presented in Washington.

Georgieva said the episode taught her the vital need to ensure that those who work for her have an opportunity to voice concerns. She said she plans to meet with IMF officials on Monday to discuss the incident and explore ways to bolster the reliability of the IMF’s economic reports.

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“Let me first remind everyone that the problem was with one particular, rather controversial World Bank report, not the IMF research and data,” she said.

She said the IMF board recognized the “excellence of the IMF and IMF research” and the agency’s strong surveillance system that ensures the integrity of their data.

The controversy concerned an annual “Doing Business” report produced by the World Bank, which assessed the business climate in key countries. There were allegations that Georgieva and other senior World Bank officials put pressure on the staff preparing the report to improve China’s rank when the World Bank urged China to increase its financial support for World Bank programs.

After the investigation report of a private law firm was published, the World Bank announced that it was discontinuing the annual doing business ranking. But the incident fueled complaints from critics, including Congressmen, that China has too much influence over institutions like the IMF and the World Bank.

Georgieva said she was grateful to have presented her side of the case to the IMF board last week.

“When we finally presented two sides of the story side by side, there was nothing,” she told reporters on Wednesday.

“That’s not to say I’m not taking the broader message to make sure employees can always turn to managers … to signal dissatisfaction and disagreement,” she said.

The IMF board of directors announced late Monday evening that Georgieva could keep her job, an announcement made after speaking with US Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen earlier that day.

In a statement describing the conversation, the Treasury Department said the United States, the largest shareholder in both the IMF and the World Bank, sees a need to take proactive steps to “strengthen data integrity and credibility with the IMF “And ensure that whistleblowers are protected.

Georgieva, a Bulgarian economist, is the second woman to head the IMF. She succeeded Christine Lagarde in 2019 after Lagarde took over the management of the European Central Bank.

At this week’s financial meetings, efforts to increase IMF and World Bank resources to fight the pandemic in poorer countries, proposals to support the fight against climate change, and discussions on adjusting a global corporate minimum tax will be the Yellen’s top priority has admitted.

On Wednesday, finance officials representing the group of the top 20 industrialized countries approved the presentation of the proposal for the global minimum tax at a summit of G-20 leaders in Rome from October 30th to 31st. The proposal was approved by 136 nations last week.

Yellen said in a statement released by the Treasury Department that the new corporate minimum tax would provide additional revenue that could be used to “fight climate change and reduce economic inequality, protect American jobs from the race to the bottom, and benefit the middle class care and “working people at home and around the world.”

The deal requires action by Congress, where Republicans have expressed strong opposition. Yellen said she was confident the deal could win congressional approval.

The United States will be represented at this week’s finance meetings by Yellen and Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell.

In its latest World Economic Outlook, released Tuesday, the IMF slightly lowered its forecast for global growth this year to 5.9%, compared to 6% in July.

At a separate press conference on Wednesday, World Bank President David Malpass said the world is suffering from a “dramatically uneven recovery” that has plunged more than 100 million people into extreme poverty.

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