Glimpses from around the world that will make you smile and cry.
Ashok Lahiri, a distinguished economist with experience in government, the private sector, and electoral politics, has been appointed as the new Vice-Chairman of NITI Aayog, tasked with strengthening India's reform trajectory and policy-making.
Seeking foreign loan had forced Pakistan to 'bow' its head and make compromises at the 'cost of self-respect', Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif has said in a candid admission about the humiliation involved in approaching 'friendly countries' for financial aid.
Gita Gopinath, the IMF's Indian-American chief economist has been promoted as its First Deputy Managing Director recognising her exceptional intellectual leadership in helping the global economy and the Fund to navigate the "twists and turns" of the "worst economic crisis of our lives". Gopinath would replace Geoffrey Okamoto who plans to leave the International Monetary Fund early next year, Kristalina Georgieva, IMF's managing director announced on Thursday. Gopinath, who was scheduled to return to her academic position at Harvard University in January 2022, has decided to stay, she said. Gopinath, 49, has served as the first female chief economist of the Washington-based global lender for three years.
'When there is such an elaborate and a strong process, one would have expected anyone to either place the issues so that they can be addressed or go to the regulator and probably tell them rather than creating a kind of uncertainty for the stakeholders.
International Monetary Fund Managing Director Dominique Strauss-Kahn has announced his intention to appoint Anoop Singh as Director of the Asia Pacific Department. Singh, an Indian national, who is currently Director of the IMF's Western Hemisphere Department, will succeed David Burton. He holds graduate and post graduate degrees from the Universities of Bombay, Cambridge, and the London School of Economics. Singh has also been special advisor to the governor of the RBI.
A neutral monetary policy stance, heavy government borrowing, and issuers adjusting to a higher-for-longer yield environment have set the stage for a largely stable corporate bond market in 2026.
India's new national accounts will leverage new data sources and surveys to enhance the measurement of the country's informal economy, and introduce double deflation methods across sectors, replacing the current system that relies on a single deflation mechanism in Gross Domestic Product (GDP) calculations.
The Indian government has expressed its disagreement with the IMF staff's 'baseline' assumption that the 50 per cent US tariffs on its goods exports 'would remain in place indefinitely', based on which the staff pegged the country's GDP growth at 6.6 per cent this year, and pared its 2026-27 projection by 20 basis points to 6.2 per cent.
The levy, the IMF said, should raise an equivalent of at least two per cent of a country's economic output -- about $300 billion in the US -- and set it aside to underwrite the cost of seeing banks through bankruptcy.
'Only four or five original companies remain; the rest have been replaced every decade as sectors evolve or leadership shifts.' 'Companies that fail to adapt -- like many textile mills from the 1970s and shipping firms from the 1980s -- disappear.' 'Benchmark indices reward those who reinvent themselves in line with economic demands.'
'The danger is that when the music stops, the fall will be sudden, faster, and deeper than anyone expects,' warns Debashis Basu.
Re-entry into the list could have far-reaching consequences for Pakistan, including diminished foreign investment, increased borrowing costs, and tighter scrutiny from global financial institutions.
The International Monetary Fund (IMF) has said its executive board granted $1 billion in assistance to Pakistan this month after finding out that the country met all conditions and targets for it.
The Indian economy is expected to be "a little weaker" in 2025 despite steady global growth, IMF managing director Kristalina Georgieva has said. Georgieva also said she expects quite a lot of uncertainty in the world this year mainly around the trade policy of the US. In her annual media roundtable with a group of reporters on Friday, she said global growth is expected to be steady in 2025, but with regional divergence.
India registered its protest at the board of IMF, which met on Friday to review the EFF lending programme for Pakistan.
"Antonio Borges, director of the International Monetary Fund's European Department, has notified IMF managing director Christine Lagarde of his intention to leave the Fund for personal reasons," the IMF said in a statement on Wednesday.
International Monetary Fund managing director Dominique Strauss-Kahn on Thursday said he favoured new heads of the World Bank and the Fund to be from countries other than Europe and the United States.
International Monetary Fund Managing Director Rodrigo de Rato will quit the Fund in October without completing his five-year term which ends in May 2009.
The scramble for International Monetary Fund managing director's chair has escalated into a war of sorts with developing nations calling for a change in the power equation.
International Monetary Fund and World Bank are top global financial institutions.
Battling damaging allegations of sexual assault, Strauss-Kahn tendered his resignation from the top post of the IMF on Wednesday, while maintaining that he was innocent.
IMF managing director Dominique Strauss-Kahn said that many Asian economies are already unwinding stimulus measures.
Strauss Khan argued that the stimulus measures adopted by countries to combat the global crisis should be withdrawn only when the economic recovery has taken hold and unemployment is set to decline.
International Monetary Fund's former boss Dominique Strauss-Kahn on Monday pleaded not guilty in a brief court appearance to charges that he sexually assaulted a hotel maid here last month.
The International Monetary Fund has added island nation Tuvalu located in the Pacific Ocean between Hawaii and Australia as its 187th member.
Terming the Indian growth pattern as impressive, the International Monetary Fund has said that it does not foresee the economy overheating as long as the current monetary policy is in place. "(India's) growth has been impressive--9.7 per cent in 2006, 8.9 per cent in 2007 and we are viewing at 8.4 per cent in 2008. That is really an impressive growth pattern," IMF Managing Director Rodrigo de Rato said.
IMF chief Horst Kohler, who is in Dubai to World Bank Group and IMF meetings, did not comment on the issue of BPCL and HPCL divestment.
US President Joe Biden attended the Association of Southeast Asian Nations gala dinner in Phnom Penh, Cambodia.
Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa came out in the open on Tuesday to oppose the notion that the next Managing Director of the International Monetary Fund (IMF) should be from Europe and argued that such a selection criteria undermines the legitimacy of the fund.
The US' influence on a European CEO-headed multilateral institution is out of sync.
Bhalla will succeed former RBI deputy governor Subir Gokarn, who died in the US on July 30 after a brief illness.
Horst Koehler, managing director of International Monetary Fund, has announced his resignation after being nominated to become the German President.
Finance Minister Pranab Mukherjee on Tuesday congratulated French Finance Minister Christine Lagarde on her appointment as the new Managing Director of the International Monetary Fund.
The question is whether this would mean any change in IMF's policies, particularly on the question of what to forgo out of the impossible trinity of an independent monetary policy, managed exchange rates and a liberal capital account.
Wabel Abdallah, a 60-year-old Lebanese national, had been leading the IMF's office in the Afghan capital since 2008.
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