Anyone in charge of the International Monetary Fund would be concerned about what is happening in Ukraine, but Kristalina Georgieva has a personal reason to be concerned about events in Eastern Europe. In London, two days before Vladimir Putin launched his offensive, IMF managing director said To surveyR He has family ties to the northeastern city of Kharkiv – an early target for Russian air raids.
“My brother married a Ukrainian, and he and his wife went there to look after their mother,” says the Bulgarian-born economist. “They stayed because they did not want to leave him in this time of uncertainty. I talk to him everyday.”
Since taking the IMF job in 2019, Georgieva has spent much of her time dealing with the economic fallout from the biggest global health crisis in a century. She is already worried about what the pandemic has done for the world: a war is something she could have done without.
I have seen the impact of bad policies on people’s lives. I watched my mother’s life savings vanish with hyperinflation in the 1990s
Kristalina Georgieva
“I am deeply concerned. Countries that were on hold for the first time in at least two decades are lagging behind. Poverty is rising, hunger is increasing and instability is increasing. Because of the level of vaccination and the availability of policy support There is a dangerous gap between rich countries and the rest of the world.”
In a way, Georgieva is no different from the 11 IMF managing directors who came before her. A deal dating back to the 1940s means that Europeans always choose the head of the IMF in exchange for the job of running the World Bank going to an American.
Georgieva is different, however, in that she is the first IMF chief to come from a former communist country: she was born in 1953 in Sofia – the year Joseph Stalin died. It is safe to say that none of his predecessors had a great-grandfather who was a major revolutionary.
Sitting on the top floor of a hotel next to the Thames with her back to the London skyline, she says: “I grew up in a loving family. I would walk back from school, the windows were open and I could hear him singing.
“There were difficulties, and the more I grew up, the more I recognized them. The biggest was the restriction of freedom and the way people are kept in the dark can seriously affect them.”
Her upbringing, Georgieva says, was a good preparation to run the IMF, a multilateral organization that provides advice and financial assistance to 190 member states. “I saw the impact of bad policies on people’s lives,” she says. “I noticed that my mother’s lifetime savings were wiped out as a result of hyperinflation in the 1990s. I remember waking up at 4 in the morning and standing in a queue to get milk for my daughter.”
CV
Age 68
Family Father Ivan was a civil engineer; Mother Minka worked as a scarf weaver and later as a shop manager. His great-grandfather, Ivan Karshovsky, was a prominent Bulgarian revolutionary. Married to Kino Kino with a daughter, Deci and two grandchildren.
Education PhD in Economics and MA in Political Economy and Sociology from Karl Marx Higher Institute of Economics in Sofia. Postgraduate research at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and the London School of Economics.
past holidays “New Year’s Eve with my family in Sandanski, a beautiful town in southwestern Bulgaria.”
best advice given to her “In the words of my father: ‘Do something good and throw it behind you’.”
biggest career mistake It is too late to recognize the importance of gender equality. “I am now doing my part to make up for the past.”
words she overuses “Whole heartedly.”
how does she relax Playing her guitar (Beatles songs are a favorite) and recording bedtime stories for her granddaughter.
Before taking over from Christine Lagarde at the IMF, Georgieva was second at the World Bank, during which time she oversaw the annual Doing Business Report, which ranked countries based on how easy it was to set up and run a company there. Was. There is an allegation that Georgieva ordered bank employees to go to the doctor in the 2018 edition so that the findings were more favorable to China, putting their jobs at risk.
Top economists such as Joseph Stiglitz and Lord Stern rallied in his defense, and the IMF board eventually said it had full confidence in him. There were rumors that she was the victim of a Dirty Tricks campaign.
Lagarde says of his successor: “One needs membership support to better support members in trouble, and what is achieved matters: the consequences of this unprecedented global health crisis, led by Kristalina. The IMF response to it was quick, powerful and exceptionally calibrated to support as many countries as possible.”
Georgieva herself says: “From the very beginning of the story of Doing Business I was clear that I have done nothing wrong. I stand before the world with 40 years of professional experience, 30 of whom are in international organizations. The thing I care about is doing the right thing and serving the subscription.”
Perhaps unsurprisingly, she loves to talk about the global economy and the challenges in the aftermath of the pandemic. The IMF, she insists, is not the financially rigid organization as is often assumed, but has been an important source of support for struggling countries. “We dramatically increased support for our membership. We have done so for more countries than ever before in our history. Countries without the financial capacity were not left to fight the COVID-induced crisis alone.”
Georgieva says she wants a new IMF financial instrument – the Resilience and Sustainability Trust – up and running by the organization’s annual meeting in the autumn. This $50 million trust fund will be provided by wealthy countries donating a portion of $650 billion of IMF reserve assets allocated last year. There are plans to provide affordable long-term finance to assist developing countries in their green transition before it is too late.
She says the Cop26 conference in Glasgow was only a partial success, as it set a target for 2050, but not for the next decade. He is an environmental economist by training, and his message is clear: “All beautiful plans will make no sense, they won’t be worth the paper they’re written on, if in this decade we don’t hesitate and accelerate the transition.” Let’s do it for low-carbon, climate-resilient, economies.”
