New York: First Deputy Managing Director of the International Monetary Fund (IMF) Gita Gopinath has more than one reason to be on cloud nine. Gopinath has made it to the wall of former IMF chief economists. She took to her official Twitter handle to share the development and wrote, “Before the trend… I joined the wall of former Chief Economists of the IMF.”
According to IMF, Gopinath was appointed as the First Deputy Managing Director of the global monetary institution on January 21 this year. She oversees work of the staff, represents IMF at multilateral forums, maintains high-level contacts with member governments and Board members, media and other institutions, leads the Fund’s work on surveillance and related policies and oversees research and flagship publications.
Prior to becoming the First Deputy Managing Director of the IMF, Gopinath was appointed as the Chief Economist of the fund from 2019-22.
As the Chief Economist of IMF, she was in the news for the ‘Pandemic Paper’ on ending the coronavirus pandemic and global vaccination targets. The ‘Pandemic Paper’, co-authored by Gopinath, led to creation of the Multilateral Task Force comprising leadership of IMF, World Bank, WTO and WHO for ending the pandemic.
This paper also led to the establishment of a working group with vaccine manufacturers for identifying trade barriers, supply bottlenecks and accelerate delivery of vaccines to low and lower-middle income countries.
Besides this, she also worked with other IMF departments to formulate a new approach to help nations respond to international capital flows via Integrated Policy Framework. She further set up a Climate Change team inside the fund to analyse optimal climate mitigation policies.
