WASHINGTON –
Warning that inflation threatens to change into “a runaway prepare,” the managing director of the International Monetary Fund urged policymakers to maintain up the fight against rising prices even it means extra ache at a time of extraordinary financial turmoil.
Speaking to reporters Thursday, the IMF’s Kristalina Georgieva mentioned that the world financial system “has been hit by one shock after one other” — the coronavirus pandemic, Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and a resurgence of inflation.
But reining in rising prices ought to take precedence, she mentioned. “If we don’t restore worth stability, we are going to undermine prospects for progress,” she mentioned, including: “We can not presumably permit inflation to change into a runaway prepare — unhealthy for progress, unhealthy for folks, unhealthy particularly for poor folks.”
The U.S. Federal Reserve and different central banks have been elevating rates of interest to tame inflation. On Thursday, the U.S. reported that inflation accelerated in September, with the price of housing and different requirements intensifying strain on Americans. Consumer prices rose 8.2% in contrast with September of final yr.
Georgieva acknowledged that the upper borrowing prices would pinch financial progress, however she urged policymakers to indicate restraint in spending cash to ease the ache.
“When financial coverage places a foot on the brakes,” she mentioned, “fiscal coverage shouldn’t step on the accelerator.”
Governments, a lot of them already closely indebted after battling the pandemic, ought to deal with serving to essentially the most weak at a time of meals shortages and punishingly excessive power prices, not on broader spending applications. “Policy measures have to be nicely focused, and so they have to be non permanent,” she mentioned.
Georgieva’s name for inflation vigilance comes at a time when some economists fear that central banks will overdo rate of interest hikes and trigger pointless financial ache.
Georgieva additionally warned that the “fragmentation” of the world financial system into competing political blocs may trigger inflation to linger. If geopolitical tensions trigger corporations to maneuver their provide chains — out of China, for example — manufacturing may change into much less environment friendly and dearer. And central financial institution price hikes could not do a lot about it.
“If we lose the advantages of a more-integrated world financial system, all of us could be poorer,” she mentioned.
Georgieva made the feedback because the world’s monetary leaders collect in Washington for the autumn conferences of the IMF and World Bank.