IMF post may go to China or India

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April 19: The British Prime Minister, Mr David Cameron, on Tuesday indicated that the new managing director of the Internat-ional Monetary Fund (IMF) could be from emerging economies like India or China after he ruled out support for his predecessor, Mr Gordon Brown.

Mr Brown is being increasingly seen in the British media as a candidate to replace the IMF current managing director, Mr Dominique Strauss-Kahn of France, who will finish his five-year term in office next year. Mr Strauss-Kahn could leave his post as early as July this year if he decides to rejoin active politics in his native country and seek the Socialist Party nomination for the President of France in 2012.

However, he said that it was time for the world’s financial watchdog to shift focus from the West. “It may well be that actually when you think that the IMF has got to be listened to and taken seriously by countries not just in the West but all over the world, it may well be that it’s time to actually have a candidate from another part of the world in order to increase its standing in the world,” Mr Cameron said in an interview in BBC Radio 4’s Today programme on Tuesday morning.

Without openly supporting any country, Mr Cameron said: “If you think about the general principle, we have got the rise of India and China and Southeast Asia, a shift in the world’s focus. It may well be the time for the IMF to start thinking about that shift in focus too.”