Finance Minister Yoon Jeung-hyun yesterday urged the International Monetary Fund to come up with criteria for exit strategies, stressing that they should be implemented only when a full recovery is ensured.
In a keynote address to the IMF/World Bank Annual Meeting in Istanbul, Yoon said that the international community should expand the global safety net for developing and emerging economies that are vulnerable to external shocks, according to ministry officials here.
"Specifically, currency swap arrangements and regional financial cooperation should continue to be pursued," Yoon said.
He also called on the IMF to secure sufficient resources to "respond to the economic crisis through a quota increase of at least 100 percent."
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Separately, the minister said that Korea will benefit the most from governance reforms of the IMF.
His comment came after the International Monetary and Financial Committee agreed in Istanbul on Sunday to shift a 5 percent quota share from advanced countries to emerging countries to reflect recent power changes in the global economy.
"There has been a heated debate on how we have to reallocate the quota during the meeting. The United States seems to think that shifting quotas to nations other than Europe would serve their interest and Korea agrees with the United States," Yoon told Korean reporters after attending the two-day meeting of the IMFC.
"Korea will benefit most from the IMF quota reforms," he said.
Yoon pointed out that the balance of the world economy is experiencing a power shift from the dominance of the United States to a multi-polar one led by major economies including Europe and China.
While the balance of power is coming to Asia, the Korean Peninsula should be operated like a whole economic bloc to survive competition with China and Japan, he said.
During the meeting, Yoon called on the IMF to choose a managing director and other executives in a transparent manner, regardless of their nationality, he also said.
As Asia`s fourth-largest economy, Korea`s status in the international community has remarkably improved, mainly due to its quick economic recovery from the global financial crisis, Yoon said.
"I have been asked many questions about how the Korean economy could make the quickest recovery. Now we have to meet the expectations of the international community," he said.
With the government`s aggressive fiscal stimulus and accommodative monetary policy from late last year, Korea`s quarter-to-quarter growth rate swung from minus 5.1 percent in the fourth quarter last year to 0.1 percent in the first quarter, and then rose to 2.6 percent in the second quarter.
(yoonmi@heraldcorp.com)

By Kim Yoon-mi