June 2, 1999
Camdessus calls for council to govern IMF Montreal - International Monetary Fund chief Michel Camdessus called Wednesday for the creation of a ministerial-level council as the top decision-making body in the financial institution. Speaking here at the fifth Montreal conference on globalization, Camdessus urged an end to the "institutional anomaly" of government ministers providing advice to the IMF directors they appoint to take decisions.
The current system of an Interim Committee has subsisted since the 1970s, Camdessus said, because a consensus did not exist to advance to a formal decision-making body. At a time when the IMF is trying to "cover deficiencies in world architecture," Camdessus said, "the establishment of the Council, in my judgement, is an idea whose time has come." A ministerial-level council, the IMF Chief added, "would demonstrate that, in the system that is emerging, where the IMF will find itself center stage ... governments take full responsibility for its strategies. "In this increasingly democratic era," he went on to say, "citizens of countries around the world could then understand better how the IMF is run." Camdessus cautioned, however, that the IMF was far from consensus on the need for a council and that the issue would be "kept very actively on the agenda in the coming months."
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