Amartya Sen named on IMF committee on governance reform

Washington: Nobel laureate Indian economist Amartya Sen has been named on a committee of eminent persons formed by the International Monetary Fund (IMF) to advise the world body on governance reform.

Chaired by South African Finance Minister Trevor Manuel, the committee would assess the adequacy of the Fund's current framework for decision making and advise on any modifications that might enable the institution to fulfil its global mandate more effectively, the IMF Managing Director Dominique Strauss-Kahn announced Thursday.

"Important progress has been made in the reform of the Fund's governance, including the initiation of a process to realign members' voting power within the Fund," he stated.

"However, the task of enhancing the Fund's legitimacy and effectiveness must also come to grips with the question of whether the significant changes since the establishment of the Fund require reform of the institutional framework through which members' voting power is actually exercised."

"Among other things, this requires careful consideration of the respective roles and responsibilities of the Board of Governors, the International Monetary and Financial Committee (IMFC), the Executive Board, and Fund Management," Strauss-Kahn said.

The IMF chief said the committee's perspective, which he hoped to have by next April, "will provide yet another important input to our reform efforts, which have benefited recently from important work by many groups and individuals, who have formed a working group to focus on these issues, numerous academics and analysts, and civil society groups”.

Thanking "these eminent persons for agreeing to bring their experience, expertise, and wisdom to bear on the on-going reform of IMF governance", Strauss-Kahn said, "It is my hope that concrete proposals can be distilled from this large body of work by September 2009."

Besides Sen, Lamont University Professor at Harvard University, the committee includes: Michel Camdessus, former Managing Director of the IMF; Kenneth Dam, Max Pam Professor at the University of Chicago; Mohamed El-Erian, co-CEO and co-CIO of Pacific Investment Management Co.; Sri Mulyani Indrawati, Indonesian Finance Minister; Guillermo Ortíz, Governor of the Bank of Mexico; and Robert Rubin, Senior Counselor at Citigroup.