Kristalina Georgieva: the IMF boss tackling Covid, the climate crisis and, now, war
Anyone in charge of the International Monetary Fund would be concerned about what is happening in Ukraine, but Kristalina Georgieva has a personal reason for being anxious about events in eastern Europe. In London, two days before Vladimir Putin launched his invasion, the IMF’s managing director tells the Observer she has a family connection to the north-eastern city of Kharkiv – an early target for Russian air strikes.
“My brother married a Ukrainian and he and his wife went there to look after her mother,” says the Bulgarian-born economist. “They stayed because they didn’t want to leave her in a time of uncertainty. I speak to him every day.”
Since taking the IMF job in 2019, Georgieva has spent most of her time dealing with the economic fallout from the biggest global health crisis in a century. She is already anxious about what the pandemic has done to the world: a war is something she could do without.
“I’m very worried. For the first time in at least two decades, countries that used to be catching up are falling behind. Poverty is growing, hunger is growing and instability is growing. There is a dangerous divergence between well-to-do countries and the rest of the world, because of levels of vaccination and the availability of policy support.”
In one respect, Georgieva is no different from the 11 IMF managing directors who preceded her. A deal dating from the 1940s means Europeans always choose the head of the IMF in return for the job of running the World Bank going to an American.
Georgieva is different, though, in that she is the first IMF head to come from a former communist country: she was born in Sofia in 1953 – the year Joseph Stalin died. It is safe to say none of her predecessors had a great-grandfather who
Read more on theguardian.com
