United States: Yellen will attend IMF and World Bank meetings next week amid political crisis

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – US Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen will attend the annual meetings of the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank which will take place next week in Morocco to raise US priorities in a context of political crisis in the United States. United.

The US Treasury indicated on Friday that Janet Yellen will support a reform of the World Bank and multilateral development banks launched a year ago to broaden their scope of action to combat climate change and other global challenges in addition to poverty reduction.

At the meetings in Marrakech, Yellen will also push for IMF members to contribute to increasing the Fund’s quota-based lending resources, without making a change to its shareholder structure that would give more leverage to larger countries. emerging countries such as China, India and Brazil, and to increase aid to Ukraine.

Janet Yellen’s trip, which also plans a visit to Luxembourg for the Eurogroup on October 16, comes in a context of political crisis in the United States. Congress narrowly avoided a federal government shutdown with a temporary funding measure that did not include aid to Ukraine.

The hard-line fringe of the Republican Party led a rebellion that ended in the ouster of Speaker of the House of Representatives Kevin McCarthy. The search for a replacement could delay the spending vote.

Speaking to Reuters, Nikki Budzinski, Democratic representative from Illinois, said she was concerned about the image of “instability and chaos” sent by the United States before the departure of Janet Yellen.

The credibility of the American Secretary of the Treasury is guaranteed by her promises kept, particularly on Ukraine, according to one of her representatives.

(Reporting David Lawder and Andrea Shalal; French version Victor Goury-Laffont, edited by Blandine Hénault)