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Nadia Calviño has found herself, in her first year at the head of the International Monetary and Financial Committee (IMFC), with the

most complicated situation in the 48 years of existence

of that advisory group that in practice draws the general lines action of the International Monetary Fund (IMF).

The reason is the invasion of Ukraine, carried out by one of its members, Russia, and which has divided the others.

The result is that, for the first time in the IMFC's 45 meetings, it has not been able to conclude with a communique,

since it was blocked by Moscow

.

The bankruptcy of international economic cooperation is thus a reality.

The problem is that the IMFC, like the vast majority of international institutions, works on the basis of consensus.

So, "if a member breaks with the others, we cannot achieve the agreement that the vast majority would have wanted", as the first vice president of the Government and Minister of Economy explained yesterday.

Instead of the statement, the Committee

had to settle for a 'Declaration of the President

', which has the support of the majority of the group, in which Calviño recalls the condemnation of the invasion carried out by the United Nations.

In her intervention before the media, the Spanish vice president spoke of "dark times" in which she, she said, "international cooperation is more important than ever."

In addition to Russia, the IMFC is attended by a number of nations that are sympathetic to the Russian invasion of Ukraine, are benefiting from it by obtaining raw materials from Moscow at a discount, or are maintaining strict neutrality, such as

China, India, Mexico, Argentina and South Africa

.

Predictably, Calviño did not go into the details of the meeting, which is behind closed doors, and limited himself to explaining that the attendees had participated in

"broad, deep, and enlightening discussions, and I think they were very productive"

, which sounds close to the formula of the "frank exchange of views" with which it is implied that a summit has not been successful.

There is no doubt that, as Calviño pointed out, this is "one of the most tense and difficult periods in the history of the IMF."

The fracture in international cooperation had already been exposed on Wednesday, when the finance ministers and the governors of the central banks of several democracies that support Ukraine left the G-20 meeting when the Russian Economy Minister took the floor,

Anton Siluanov

.

Calviño participated in the meeting precisely because she is the president of the IMFC, a position that she will hold this year and the next, although she took advantage of her intervention to condemn the Russian invasion of Ukraine.

In the end,

the G-20 also failed to reach a consensus to issue a statement.

According to Calviño, the disagreement over what he had described on Tuesday as "Putin's war" did not extend to the economic sphere.

In fact, in this sense, the president of the IMFC insisted that there had been "virtual unanimity on substantive issues" at the summit.

The IMF is committed to alleviating the economic effects of the war, both for

Ukraine, which needs almost 4.7 billion euros per month to keep its state apparatus running

, as in the developing countries, where up to 30 million people could be forced into a situation of famine due to the closure of the Black Sea ports through which the two belligerent countries export practically all of their enormous production agricultural.

As Calviño pointed out, "the concern [of the members of the IMFC] goes beyond the neighboring countries [of Russia and Ukraine] and has a global reach."

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