The International Monetary Fund’s Executive Board has appointed a high-level panel to undertake an external evaluation of its Independent Evaluation Office (IEO). According to the statement from IMF, Donald Kaberuka who’s currently a “Special Envoy: Financing the African Union and the Peace Fund,” will chair the board that will carry out the third external evaluation of IEO. Dr. Donald Kaberuka Kaberuka is a Rwandan economist who has served as President of the African Development Bank, before which he was the Minister of Finance and Economic Planning in Rwanda. The board is also comprise Der Jiun Chia, the Assistant Managing Director of the Markets and Investment Group at the Monetary Authority of Singapore, as well as Pernilla Meyersson acting chief of staff at the General Secretariat of the Sveriges Riksbank, the Central Bank of Sweden. IMF indicates that the evaluation will assess how successfully the IEO has met its goals to serve as a means to enhance the learning culture within the Fund, strengthen the Fund’s external credibility, and support the Executive Board’s institutional governance and oversight responsibilities. The IEO is an independent body of management and operates at “arm’s length” from the Executive board, reporting directly to the IMF’s Executive Board. “When the IEO was established by the IMF Executive Board in 2001, it was envisaged that periodic external evaluations would be carried out to assess its effectiveness and to consider possible improvements to its structure, mandate, operational modalities, or Terms of Reference. This would be the third evaluation of the IEO and is expected to be concluded by mid-2018,” reads part of the statement. The first and second external evaluations were commissioned and discussed by the IMF Executive Board in 2006 and 2013 respectively. The past two external evaluations were clear that the IEO has been a successful institution and that it has played an important role in improving the governance and transparency of the IMF. However, these previous assessments concluded that the IEO has not always recognised some difficulties and constraints in its analysis, and that its critical views may have on occasions damaged the Fund’s external credibility. For instance, the second report disclosed that the IMF has been subject to different pressures, including from its most influential members, and that IEO has not recognised this. Together with his team, Kaberuka is likely to focus on reviewing the extent to which the office had succeeded during its operation in fulfilling its mandates since 2013, but also make recommendations to enhance its role in IMF’s effectiveness.
