IMF to weigh reform of exchange-rate monitoring
Thursday, 14 June 2007
WASHINGTON, June 13 (AFP): The IMF executive board will consider reform of its exchange-rate monitoring Friday, a sensitive issue in the context of the US-Chinese yuan currency dispute.
"Work on reviewing this is now well advanced, and our executive board will be meeting later this week to consider the issue further," said Rodrigo Rato, managing director of the International Monetary Fund.
The IMF website said the board meeting to consider reform of the 30- year-old legal framework for monitoring was scheduled Friday.
Rato, in an address to a conference in Washington on the Bretton Woods institutions, which includes the World Bank and the World Trade Organization, declined to explain in detail the proposals to be debated.
Rato said the IMF wants to obtain from its 185 members the authority to make wider recommendations on economic and monetary policy than is established in the 1977 Decision on Surveillance over Exchange Rate Policies.
"I see it as a major deficiency of the 1977 Decision that it has nothing to say about policies other than exchange-rate policies," Rato said.
The issue, which is at the top of the IMF's working agenda on internal reform, is made even more delicate because of the United States's pressure on China to allow more flexibility in the yuan.
Washington accuses China of keeping its currency undervalued, giving its exports an unfair competitive edge and helping to swell China's ballooning trade surplus with the US, which reached 232.5 billion dollars last year.
"Work on reviewing this is now well advanced, and our executive board will be meeting later this week to consider the issue further," said Rodrigo Rato, managing director of the International Monetary Fund.
The IMF website said the board meeting to consider reform of the 30- year-old legal framework for monitoring was scheduled Friday.
Rato, in an address to a conference in Washington on the Bretton Woods institutions, which includes the World Bank and the World Trade Organization, declined to explain in detail the proposals to be debated.
Rato said the IMF wants to obtain from its 185 members the authority to make wider recommendations on economic and monetary policy than is established in the 1977 Decision on Surveillance over Exchange Rate Policies.
"I see it as a major deficiency of the 1977 Decision that it has nothing to say about policies other than exchange-rate policies," Rato said.
The issue, which is at the top of the IMF's working agenda on internal reform, is made even more delicate because of the United States's pressure on China to allow more flexibility in the yuan.
Washington accuses China of keeping its currency undervalued, giving its exports an unfair competitive edge and helping to swell China's ballooning trade surplus with the US, which reached 232.5 billion dollars last year.