Kganyago likely to stay on at Bank
• Governor’s new job at the IMF tips the scales in favour of his reappointment in 2019, by which time SA will have a new president
Reserve Bank governor Lesetja Kganyago’s appointment to chair a high-level IMF committee suggests it is highly likely he will be reappointed as governor when his five-year term ends in November 2019.
Reserve Bank governor Lesetja Kganyago’s appointment to chair a high-level IMF committee suggests it is highly likely he will be reappointed as governor when his five-year term ends in November 2019.
Kganyago was unanimously chosen by the IMF’s board of governors to chair the International Monetary and Finance Committee, which is made up of finance ministers and central bank governors and is the key policy advisory body for the IMF. He will serve a three-year term — unless he ceases to be governor of SA’s central bank, in which case the IMF would have to find another central bank governor to take over.
Asked at the weekend whether he would be available to serve another term as governor, Kganyago said: “I am always available to serve this country,” though he added that a new president of SA would be in place by then and would have to make the decision.
Kganyago’s IMF appointment is one of several accolades the Reserve Bank’s leadership has won recently, with Central Banking last week choosing Kganyago as governor of the year and deputy governor Daniel Mminele receiving Germany’s highest tribute, the Great Order of Merit. Central Banking said Kganyago had “defended and enhanced the Reserve Bank’s reputation as an independent and well-governed institution against all threats”.
The governor said though the magazine cited the Bank’s success in fighting inflation, the big theme was its pushback against attacks on the Bank’s independence. “It is a recognition that here is an institution that not just treats its mandate seriously but treats its role in society — and the fact that it has to act independently — seriously.”
Kganyago, who is the first sub-Saharan African governor to chair the International Monetary and Finance Committee, describes it as being “at the heart of global financial and economic governance”, and although its role is advisory, the IMF’s board of governors would not generally ignore its advice.
Although the job would not add to his travel commitments — the committee meets in Washington only in April and October, when Kganyago would normally be at the IMF’s spring and annual meetings — it would need dedicated capacity within the Reserve Bank to help him think through issues, he said.
A crucial part of the job is to manage the process of the 15th quota review of the IMF, an intensely political process in which member countries tend to push for higher quotas because this determines access to funding in the event that they have to borrow from the IMF.
SA has long played an important role in global governance, and Kganyago has long experience of how the IMF works and of efforts to reform its governance, having co-chaired a special committee of the Group of 20 set up in 2009 to review IMF and World Bank governance.