The International Monetary Fund strongly backed the European Central Bank’s plan to easy the European debt crisis with unlimited bond purchases, IMF Managing Director Christine Lagarde told reporters in Russia on Sunday.
“The ECB said itself that it welcomed highly the involvement of the IMF. We are keen to help,” Ms. Lagarde commented on the sidelines of a meeting of the Asia Pacific Economic Cooperation forum.
“Clearly, when we get involved, we want to be involved both in the design and the monitoring of programs. We don’t particularly like to do monitoring without having participated actively in the design,” Reuters quoted her saying.
The ECB on Thursday announced its plan to buy “unlimited” volumes of government bonds in secondary markets to help bring down borrowing costs for some of the region’s fiscally-frail countries.
In a statement, Ms. Lagarde said that European policy steps “pave the way forward”. “The priority is now coordinated implementation,” she said.
Ms. Lagarde also backed a new Chinese infrastructure spending plan, saying it was important that countries running external surpluses make their contribution to supporting global growth.
