Kristalina Georgieva: Leading the IMF, Navigating Global Crises and Strengthening Cooperation

Hi, everyone. I'm Nicolas Tangen from the Norwegian Soil and Wealth Fund. And today, I put on a tie because I'm in really good company with Kristalina Georgieva. Wonderful to be with you. Now, Kristalina is the, managing director of, IMF, the International Monetary Fund. And you are known for your visionary, leadership and the way you have been advocating for really important, bold, long term reforms. So let's just start with the beginning here. IMF, what is it? Well, the IMF was created, towards the end of the second World War together with the World Bank to help countries recover after the war and to put in place institutions that can stabilize the financial system. Our mandate, macroeconomic and financial stability for growth and employment. We have a membership of a 191 countries. In fact, over the last years, we got two new members, small countries, Andorra and Liechtenstein. That's good. And how do you help these companies? What we do for our members is, first, help them to see the world economy from one vintage point. We have this unique right to collect data from all countries, and we do that regularly. So we can take the vital science of economies, aggregate the picture, and then see what are the trends in the world they should be mindful of. Secondly, when countries are in trouble and they need quickly financing to stabilize their economies, we come true. We have lending capacity of $1,000,000,000,000. We deploy it for countries in crisis. Some are middle income countries, some are poor, vulnerable countries. And the third thing we do is we help countries build good institutions, especially monetary authorities, fiscal authorities, data, statistical capacity, so they can see their own economic development, with more, educated eye. How bad does the crisis need to be before they call you? Well, sometimes they call before a crisis hits. We have also a function to prevent crisis from happening. Sometimes they call when markets close on them. I'll tell you a story of my own country. I am Bulgarian. In the late nineties, Bulgaria was hit by hyperinflation, over 8000% inflation, and it caught on the IMF. So what the IMF did for my country was to help us put in place a currency board, which really stabilize the, economy and put fiscal discipline. Bulgaria today has, 24% debt to GDP, 3% deficit, and as of January 1 would be a member of the eurozone. To among the biggest clients of the fund, Argentina, has had the number of programs. So far, none of them got the country completely out of trouble. We are hopeful that our current program, supporting a president that is very reform minded, very determined, can bring Argentina to a point of not needing, to to borrow from the IMF anymore. Was it when, IMF, bailed out, Bulgaria that you decided, you know what? I would love to be in charge of that one day. You know, at that time, …