King Abdullah, Custodian of the Two Holy Mosques, and Christine Lagarde, the visiting International Monetary Fund chief, met here Friday and discussed the “world economy,” the official SPA news agency reported. The two reviewed “IMF action and developments in the world economy” in the presence of Ibrahim Al-Assaf, Finance Minister, and Fahd Bin Abdullah Al-Mubarak, Governor of the Saudi Arabian Monetary Agency (SAMA), it said. Saudi Arabia is a member of the G-20 group of leading economies under pressure to boost their contributions to the IMF's resources for crisis intervention. The Fund says it wants to raise another $500 billion, on top of the nearly $390 billion that is available now, to help countries in financial straits. “The IMF will count on its main member states” to provide funding, Lagarde was quoted as saying in an interview published by Al-Sharq Al-Awsat Arabic daily. “The financial crisis is a global problem, considering its effects on all nations,” Lagarde said. “It is therefore in the interests of everyone to commit to a track that will ensure an exit to this crisis.” Lagarde arrived in Riyadh from Tunisia, where she assured authorities of the IMF's support. She is on a two-day visit to the Kingdom, her first since being appointed last year to head the world body. Over the past two weeks, prominent Saudis have for the first time indicated publicly the Kingdom might be willing to give money - but with some strings attached. “What we can be certain of is that large developing nations will not agree to provide additional funds without a greater say in the IMF's affairs, and this applies to all global economic governance organizations,” Prince Turki Al-Faisal, a former Saudi ambassador to the US and UK, told an audience in Riyadh late last month.
