IMF Chief Georgieva poised to win key support for second term
Kristalina Georgieva is interested in a second five-year term as head of the International Monetary Fund and is poised to secure sufficient support, according to people familiar with the matter.
Georgieva, a Bulgarian economist whose term started in 2019 and runs through the end of September, needs the backing of major European nations and the US to ensure the success of any potential bid.
Her pursuit of a second term would be with the understanding she has the support of France and Germany, the two largest economies in Europe, said the people, who asked not to be identified describing private conversations.
The leader of the Washington-based fund has always been a European national picked by European nations, a post-World War II understanding with the US, which in turn chooses the president of the World Bank.
Meetings of Group of 20 finance ministers last week in Brazil focused attention on the issue, with French Finance Minister Bruno Le Maire saying that Georgieva is doing a “great job” and that his country would back her if she sought another term.
A German senior official signaled to Bloomberg News on Thursday that Finance Minister Christian Lindner is sympathetic to appointing Georgieva for another term, but that a formal confirmation is still at least a few days away.
When asked whether she’s interested in a second term in recent weeks, Georgieva has repeatedly deflected, saying that she’s focused on her current term.
At a press briefing on Thursday, IMF spokeswoman Julie Kozack declined to say whether Georgieva is interested in serving a second term, calling it “really a question for the managing director herself.” Kozack referred to the IMF’s rules for choosing the chief, who officially is chosen by the fund’s 24-member Executive Board, with the objective to reach a selection by consensus.
Georgieva’s support from the US, the fund’s biggest voting member, wavered following accusations in 2021 that she improperly influenced a World Bank ranking of China’s business climate.
The IMF and its sister institution, the World Bank, emerged from World War II as key pieces of the US-led order, focused, respectively, on helping countries recover from financial crisis and providing loans for development projects.
Georgieva, 70, led the fund’s efforts to aid indebted countries through the pandemic and has more recently warned about the global economic impact of trade fragmentation caused by worsening US-China relations.
She hasn’t publicly signaled her intentions after her term ends. No candidates have yet been publicly proposed.
EU leaders are set to partake in another round of horse-trading over top jobs later this year, including for the posts atop the European Commission and NATO, which requires striking a balance between different political, geographic and strategic interests.
While the fund’s executive board elects the leader in a vote, the support of Europe and the US – together accounting for around half of all voting shares — would make it tough for other candidates to surmount.
Georgieva moved from the World Bank to take the top IMF job in 2019, a position she won in part because she was from an Eastern European nation, a region typically underrepresented in top institutional positions.
