Nobel laureate and economist Joseph Stiglitz on Monday advocated formation of parallel regional monetary funds against the International Monetary Fund to contain concentration of decision-making and US domination on the financial institution.
The dismantling of the IMF was not a viable solution, as it would be reinvented in some other form by the political class following the high-level global financial instability after its dismantling, Stiglitz said at the ongoing World Social Forum 2004 in Mumbai.
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"Instead, we should focus on the weaknesses in the policies and procedures which it is implementing," he said advocating for parallel regional organisations, which would give competition to the IMF.
IMF was plagued by the dominance of the US on account of its veto power and the lack of representation of all partakers in the society, he said.
"IMF takes decisions which affect all but the voting rights are with the finance ministers and the central bank governors, which are often under political pressure and do not represent entire segments of the society," Stiglitz said.
On the issue of farm subsidies, he said: "The issue could be solved when the exporters in the US understand that progress was being held by narrow interests of about 25,000 cotton farmers."
He called for the creation of corpus for global public goods for the benefit of the larger international community and said it could be funded through revenues from the management of global natural resources such as fisheries and seabeds.
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