April 11, 2000
Washington -The International Monetary Fund, responding to complaints about its secretive operations, agreed on Monday to appoint a group of outside experts to monitor its work, an IMF statement said. The brief statement said the IMF would work out over the next five months exactly how its new evaluation office would work, reporting back in time for the IMF's annual meeting in Prague this September. IMF board member Thomas Bernes, who chaired a committee examining the options, said it would increase transparency at the international lender.
"It's part of the evolution of transparency within the IMF, it's reacting to the criticism, it's reacting to the sense that we have to be seen to have independent evaluations and that we have learned some good lessons from the independent evaluations we have already had," Bernes said.
The IMF has faced years of criticism for its economic policies. Demonstrators protesting in Washington this week have vowed to bring the US capital to a halt as they stage a series of rallies against the policies of the IMF and the World Bank. Bernes said the new panel would be authorized to examine any aspect of IMF activity, including IMF lending in individual countries. The fund, which recently has commissioned three independent reviews, still would be authorized to call for separate independent assessments, and staff would continue to review their actions on a regular basis. But some IMF sources questioned whether the new review body would be truly independent or if it would just add another level of bureaucracy to the IMF.
An independent panel at the World Bank has carried out reviews of individual projects, but there have been delays in releasing the information and the bank's panel cannot make formal recommendations about what bank management should do.
More Information on the International Monetary Fund
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