Political Economist

Bridging the gap between rich and poor countries should be as high a priority for the International Monetary Fund as helping to solve the world’s financial imbalances, Dominique Strauss Kahn, the probable next managing director of the IMF told the Financial Times.

The former French finance minister, who is on a world tour to win support for his candidacy to head the IMF, said that “going south of the Equator” would matter just as much as going “east to the Pacific” – a reference to deep concerns about the growing trade gap between China and the developed world. Mr Strauss Kahn will fly to Mozambique on Sunday to meet African finance ministers and then over the following two weeks to Mexico, Argentina, South Africa, Brazil, Saudi Arabia, Egypt, China, South Korea, Japan, India and Russia in what he freely described as a “campaign” among the largest developing countries to get the job.

Asked whether Europe should continue to maintain its stranglehold on the top IMF job as the US does with the World Bank, Mr Strauss Kahn said he supported an open process and would welcome candidates from other parts of the world if they threw their hats into the ring before the closing date at the end of August.

“It is entirely legitimate for any country that is a member of the IMF to promote one of their nationals as a candidate,” he told the FT in his first interview since being proposed for the job.

“But of course that does not mean that a European cannot also be a candidate,” he added.

On Friday the Bush administration formally endorsed Mr Strauss Kahn’s candidacy following his meeting with Hank Paulson, the US treasury secretary.

Mr Strauss Kahn on Friday also met Bob Zoellick, the new president of the World Bank, who moved into the job following the unexpected resignation of Paul Wolfowitz last month.

He said his top priorities would be to address both financial and equity imbalances in the world economy and to improve the governance structure and quota system of the IMF to better reflect the growing weight of developing countries in the world economy.

He said he believed the IMF could “adapt” to make itself more relevant to the challenges of globalisation.

“I believe strongly in multilateralism,” he said.

“I think that at this time of globalisation we need more multilaleralism – not less,” adding that he believed the US had recently become “more committed to “multilateralism”.

He said that the “integration” of poor countries into the global economy would be a top priority if he got the job.