As the infectious world economic slump brought damage to every country, it also presented an opportunity for the international community to reform the global financial system.

The opportunity should not be missed and major global financial institutes such as the International Monetary Fund (IMF) should be involved, IMF managing director Dominique Strauss-Kahn said in a recent interview with Xinhua.

While acknowledging the damage wrought by the crisis, Strauss-Kahn said the crisis "provides an opportunity to make progress on seemingly intractable issues," as it has revealed flaws in key dimensions of the current global financial architecture.

"The moment should not be missed." he noted.

Looking back, the IMF was not able to forecast the outbreak of the crisis and underestimated its impact. While the IMF excessively kept its focus on the exchange rate of the emerging economies in the past few years, it failed to give enough monitoring on advanced economies, especially those major reserve currency issuers.

The IMF and the World Bank, the two major financial institutions set up after the Bretton Woods conferences in 1944, have been in the grip of advanced economies, and their chiefs also come from western countries.

The global institutions apparently could not meet the need at current time. It hinders the world's efforts to combat the global financial crisis, as the global economic structure has changed a lot with the emergence of new economies.

At the just-concluded spring session of the World Bank and the IMF, Zhou Xiaochuan, governor of the People's Bank of China, urged the IMF to push forward its own reforms and to strengthen surveillance of the macroeconomic policies of major reserve currency issuers.

It's time for related parties to seize the opportunity to reform the international financial system in an all-round, balanced, gradual and effective manner, in order to avoid a replay of the crisis.

The top priority of the reform is to address the under-representation of the developing countries and the emerging markets as a group, protect their "rights to know" and help them have a greater voice in the global financial institutions such as the IMF.

The Group of 20 (G20) reiterated its pledge to continue to promote the reform of the IMF and the World Bank in a joint statement at its London summit in early April.

"We will reform their mandates, scope and governance to reflect changes in the world economy," said the statement, adding that "emerging and developing economies, including the poorest, must have greater voice and representation."

Moreover, the international financial institutions must be improved to ensure that they provide an impartial treatment to all members.

Strengthened regulation and supervision shall also promote the integrity and transparency of the institutions and improve their capabilities to handle crises, especially those that happened in some major developed countries.

In a major move, the G20 also agreed at the London summit to treble the resources of the IMF to US$750 billion. It meant the Fund would play a bigger role as the guardian of the global financial system.

Various drawbacks and malpractice existing in the current system were exposed in the relentless economic crunch that swept the world. However, the crisis has highlighted the necessity and imperativeness of building a new international financial order, which is fair, equitable, inclusive and well-managed.

At this critical moment, countries in the world should work together to push forward the reform of the global financial system, and made due contributions to the establishment of a reasonable and effective new world economic order.

(Xinhua News Agency April 28, 2009)