Selection process under way as IMF panel head resigns

Youssef Boutros-Ghali resigns as head of International Monetary Fund’s main policy steering panel.

WASHINGTON: Youssef Boutros-Ghali has resigned as the head of the International Monetary Fund’s (IMF) main policy steering panel, according to IMF officials.

Boutros-Ghali could have continued to chair the IMF’s International Monetary and Financial Committee (IMFC) after being replaced as Egypt’s Finance Minister, but has resigned with immediate effect.

The IMFC is comprised of finance ministers and central bankers from 24 countries and is the main advisory body to the fund’s member countries.  He was the first finance minister from a large developing country to chair the IMFC at a time that emerging market economies pushed for greater say in the global institution. Ghali had chaired the panel since October 2008, at a time when the global financial crisis swept across the world and the IMF stepped in to provide rescue loans to countries including Hungary, Romania and Ireland.

In Egypt, Boutros-Ghali has been replaced as finance minister by Samir Radwan, a former senior economist at the International Labour Organisation – the UN agency that oversees labour standards.

A statement issued by IMF said it would immediately begin the process of selecting a new IMFC chairperson, which will be determined in a vote by the fund’s 187 member countries at the committee’s next meeting.

Published in The Express Tribune, February 6^th, 2011.