Lagarde defends IMF reform, open to stay on as managing director

Christine Lagarde faced a grilling in Lima on Thursday about her track record as Managing Director of the International Monetary Fund (IMF), covering its relationship with the United States, its reputation in Latin America, its fight against climate change, and her personal future.

Defending the IMF's position on major issues, she said that she would be "open" to a second term as managing director, "if the member countries wanted her to serve."

During a panel on the global economy prior to the World Bank Group-IMF annual meetings scheduled for Oct. 9-11, Lagarde was repeatedly challenged by CNN international business correspondent, Richard Quest, as to the impact of the IMF's policies and recommendations during her term, which began on July 2011 and runs out in mid-2016.

However, she pointed out how the IMF had reformed itself to better serve its members and help them address common challenges.

Quest interrogated Lagarde as to whether the U.S. Federal Reserve had listened to the IMF's recommendation that it should wait to raise interest rates. During a meeting on Sept. 17, the Fed announced it would not raise interest rates, after the IMF repeatedly urged it to wait over the summer.

"The IMF did produce a report on the U.S. economy, in which the IMF said that, with no movement on inflation or wage increases, the Fed should wait for solid data before interest rates were raised," she said.

Lagarde expressed her support for the Fed's decision as it would be "better to raise rates at the right moment than to do it too quickly and then have to go back."

She also articulated how the IMF had become instrumental in seeing changes in two important areas of fiscal policy. One is climate change in Latin America.

The IMF is now getting and collecting more data about the financial consequences of climate change, she said.

"Natural catastrophe disasters have caused more and more IMF programs diverted to dealing with their consequences. There are more disasters, the weather is getting hotter, which has led us to warn our membership and recommend measures that will alleviate the expensive financial conditions created by these consequences," she said.

On Latin America, she directly addressed the fact that, around 15 years ago, the IMF was widely disliked across the region for free market economic policies that governments and people here saw as benefiting Western companies and trade dominance.

"This is not the old Latin America and not the old IMF," Lagarde said. "Latin American countries have demonstrated the ability to address poverty, grow their middle class and, for some of them, reform themselves without needing external help."

However, under her term as managing director, Latin America has taken advantage of IMF programs.

"Mexico and Colombia chose to take flexible credit lines to help them monitor financing. Other countries have asked for IMF help on issues such as banking supervision, anti-money laundering or anti-terrorism supervision," she said.

"We help them with their specific needs. We are a partner of Latin American countries, not their prescribers," she added. Endit