Welcome remarks for Dr. Anne Krueger, the First Deputy Managing Director of the International Monetary Fund. Meeting held at the premises of the Central Bank of Iceland.
GEIR H. HAARDE, MINISTER OF FINANCE
June 24, 2004
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Welcome remarks for Dr. Anne Krueger
Ladies and Gentlemen
I would like to welcome you all here today to listen to our distinguished speaker Dr. Anne O. Krueger, the First Deputy Managing Director of the International Monetary Fund. This year the IMF is celebrating its 60th anniversary. In connection with this milestone, we are honored to have Dr. Krueger in Iceland to offer her thoughts on the role of the IMF in today’s world.
Dr. Anne O. Krueger
Anne O. Krueger has been the First Deputy Managing Director of the IMF (the number two position in the Fund) since September 1, 2001 and served as acting Managing Director in the spring months of 2004, after Horst Koehler resigned to become President of Germany, until Mr. Rato took office in early June.
As many of you know, Dr. Krueger has had a very impressive academic and professional career. Before joining the Fund, she was the Herald L. and Caroline L. Ritch Professor at Stanford University. She was also the founding Director of Stanford's Center for Research on Economic Development and Policy Reform; and a Senior Fellow of the Hoover Institution. Ms Krueger had previously taught at the University of Minnesota and Duke University.
From 1982 to 1986 Ms. Krueger was the World Bank’s Vice President for Economics and Research. A recipient of a number of economic prizes and awards, she has published extensively on policy reform in developing countries, the role of multilateral institutions in the international economy, and the political economy of trade policy. We are highly honored to have her with us today.
Iceland and the IMF
Iceland has had strong ties with the IMF from the very beginning as one of the Fund’s 29 founding nations. When the Second World War was clearly drawing to a close, plans were laid for a new world economic order where the policy mistakes from the interwar years would be avoided. Despite only having been an independent republic for two weeks, Iceland was represented by a delegation at the landmark Bretton Woods conference in July 1944.
There is no question that Iceland has enjoyed great benefits from its IMF membership. Surveillance is one of the core functions of the IMF and Iceland has gained in this respect, especially from the country surveillance –Article IV consultations on its path towards becoming a modern open economy. In addition to the policy guidelines and insights provided by surveillance, Iceland has on four occasions received direct financing from the Fund, in the sixties, seventies and early eighties.
Iceland actively cooperates with the Nordic and Baltic countries in the IMF. These countries make up one of the Fund’s constituencies and are represented by an Executive Director in the Board of the Fund. In the course of its membership, Iceland has had a good profile at the Fund, with five Executive Directors on its Board over the years. We have also been well represented on the IMF staff and currently there are several Icelanders employed by the Fund.
Iceland chaired the Nordic-Baltic constituency in 2002 and 2003, which meant that it focused more closely on IMF issues than in past years. I personally had the pleasure to serve on the International Monetary and Financial Committee, the Fund’s most important political body, during this period. During our chairmanship of the constituency we emphasized good governance, increased transparency, fiscal prudence, the need for an orderly sovereign debt restructuring mechanism and the importance of trade liberalization in the world economy.
I know that Anne Krueger has taken a deep interest in all these issues especially debt restructuring and freer world trade and has championed such principles both during her time at the IMF and in her academic career. For me personally it is a great pleasure to be her host during her visit to Iceland as she was both my advisor and teacher of international trade and economic development at the University of Minnesota almost 30 years ago.
Let me now welcome Ms. Krueger to the podium to give her presentation on "The IMF at 60: What role for the future?"
