First day

New IMF Managing Director Christine Lagarde pledged Wednesday to push ahead with reforms to give fast-growing emerging markets greater influence at the global lender.

At her first news conference in the new job, she told reporters in Washington that the global economy was "rebounding" from the financial crisis but that growth in developed nations was running well behind that of key emerging markets such as China and India.

To reflect the changing global landscape, Lagarde said, changes were in store at the IMF itself.

"We have these tectonic plates that are moving at the moment, and that needs to be reflected in the composition of governance and employment at the Fund," she said, conceding that "it would not be a bad idea" to give a representative for emerging markets a top-ranking post at the IMF.

Greece meetings

Lagarde, who took over her post from Dominique Strauss-Kahn after his arrest in New York on sexual assault charges, faces an array of issues and acknowledged that, among those, the most pressing was the European debt crisis that has required bailouts for Ireland, Portugal and Greece.

She said the executive board would review Greece's situation on Friday, including the next 12-billion-euro tranche in the bailout for the debt-laden country.

A move for a coordinated but "voluntary" restructuring of Greece's massive debt to give the country more breathing space was cast into doubt earlier in the week after the rating agency Standard & Poor's warned that the restructuring would amount to a default and further damage the country's credit rating.

Lagarde nevertheless urged Greece's political parties to get behind a tough austerity program that Athens has had to accept to as a condition for the joint EU-IMF rescue.

"I hope all the political parties can be rightly inspired by the examples made by political parties in Ireland, by the political parties in Portugal," she said.

Lagarde, however, did not issue comment on Portugal's current fiscal status, which was downgraded by another rating agency, Moody's, to "junk status" on Tuesday.

Moody's said the current joint EU-IMF bailout for Lisbon would fail and Portugal - like Greece - would require a second, larger bailout plan.

Author: Gabriel Borrud (AFP, Reuters)
Editor: Michael Lawton