Yesterday, September 17, KFU students were lucky to attend a lecture of Bikas Joshi, International Monetary Fund Resident Representative in Russia. The event was supported by BP.

Bikas Joshi spoke on the history of the IMF from its foundation in July 1944 on out to its present day goals and activities. Focusing on the stages of the IMF development, he mentioned the member-countries’ quotas and the principle of their calculation. It includes four variables (GDP, openness, variability, and reserves), expressed in shares of global totals, with the variables assigned weights totaling to 1.0. The formula also includes a compression factor that reduces dispersion in calculated quota shares. The quota defines the amount of money a member-country can receive from the fund in case it’s needed. Bikas Joshi stressed that the quota had recently shifted from European countries to BRICS.

The IMF Resident Representative also spoke on the necessity of such an organization as the IMF for the stability of the global economics that most of the world countries realize. However, in the 2000s when they observed a slow but constant economic growth around the world, the need of the IMF was doubted by some countries.  The opinions changed after the global crisis in 2008 when the support was urgent for many states.

The students showed interest in how countries made three clusters by the economic interconnectedness – oil, Asia and advanced clusters, some states being at the boundary – like Japan belonging to Asia and advanced clusters.

Bikas Joshi paid a lot of attention to the relations between the IMF and Russia that joined the organization in 1992 after the collapse of the Soviet Union and needed the assistance in the post-crisis time.

After the lecture students asked many questions which were mostly concerned the economic future of Russia and the world. In particular, they asked the IMF Resident Representative to forecast whether we would face a new crisis soon or not. Bikas Joshi explained that the global economic situation tended to improve after the general crisis of 2008 and the urgency of post-crisis measures was disappearing.

Presentation for the lecture is here