(Reuters) — The head of the International Monetary Fund (IMF), Christine Lagarde said on Saturday (September 5) the plight of migrants is everybody’s problem.
A photograph of a three year old Syrian boy, Aylan Kurdi’s tiny body in a bright red T-shirt and dark shorts, face-down in the surf, appeared in newspapers around the world, prompting sympathy and outrage at the perceived inaction of developed nations in helping refugees.
“Reality comes back to haunt you when you see the kind of pictures that were on display and on social media so vividly in the last few days, and it really identifies the link between jobs, between hope and it certainly from my perspective reinforces the mission that we have to try to help and be as practical as we can on the ground, in programmes and in the policy advise we give. But it is everybody’s business. It is not just international institutions’ business,” Lagarde told a news conference in Ankara.
Finance ministers and central bank governors from the world’s top 20 economies were discussing the global economy in Ankara after market turmoil caused by investor expectations of slowing economic growth in China, the world’s second biggest economy.
“On the discussion we had with the Chinese authorities, it was a good, candid, very open, very thorough discussion both on the market front, on the monetary policy front, touching on the exchange rate , touching on the reforms, what has been undertaken, what will be continued, a clear reaffirmation by the two authorities, their decisiveness and determination to continue the reforms,” said Lagarde.
She also said the U.S. Federal Reserve should not rush its decision to raise interest rates and should move only when it is sure the decision is unlikely to be reversed later.
“We have taken the view in the article four on the United States that because it is such an important move not by virtue of it’s size so much but simply because the FED has had not raised interest rates in such a long time that it should really do it for good if I may say, in other words not give it a try and then have to come back,” said Lagarde.
Many emerging market economies are concerned that a Fed rate rise would trigger large outflows of capital from emerging economies into dollar-denominated assets, creating market turmoil that would hurt growth.
German Finance Minister Wolfgang Schaeuble said on Saturday that finance chiefs from the Group of 20 leading economies agreed at meetings in Turkey that there was no need for nervousness over slower growth in China.
Schaeuble also said that Beijing had assured at the meetings that it would continue with its financial market reforms.
“Obviously the most recent developments, especially in China, have played a role – and our Chinese colleagues have given an appraisal of these developments, and they have said that they have decided on comprehensive structural reform programmes and that they will introduce these. And that they had also said recently anyway what they think of the high growth rates in double-figures and that they will go back to growth rates of 6.5 or 7 percent, and they will achieve these, from all that we know, and that is why we were all agreed in the judgement, even if we have a certain weakening of the prognoses for the global economic development,” he told reporters.
Finance ministers and central bankers of the world’s 20 biggest economies discussed the issue thoroughly at a meeting in Ankara, Lagarde told a news conference after the talks.