Gita Gopinath, the No. 2 official on the International Monetary Fund, will go away her publish on the finish of August to return to Harvard University, the IMF stated in an announcement on Monday (July 21, 2025).
IMF Managing Director Kristalina Georgieva will title a successor to Ms. Gopinath in “due course,” the IMF stated.
Ms. Gopinath joined the fund in 2019 as chief economist — the primary lady to serve in that function — and was promoted to first deputy managing director in January 2022.
No remark was instantly out there from the U.S. Treasury, which manages the dominant U.S. shareholding in the IMF. While European nations have historically chosen the Fund’s managing director, the U.S. Treasury has historically advisable candidates for the primary deputy managing director function.
Ms. Gopinath is an Indian-born U.S. citizen.
The timing of the transfer caught some IMF insiders abruptly and seems to have been initiated by Ms. Gopinath.
Ms. Gopinath, who had left Harvard to be a part of the IMF, will return to the college as a professor of economics.
Ms. Gopinath’s departure will provide Treasury an opportunity to advocate a successor at a time when U.S. President Donald Trump is searching for to restructure the worldwide financial system and finish longstanding U.S. commerce deficits with excessive tariffs on imports from practically all nations.
She will return to a college that has been in the Trump administration’s crosshairs after it rejected calls for to change its governance, hiring, and admissions practices. Ms. Georgieva stated Ms. Gopinath joined the IMF as a extremely revered educational and proved to be an “exceptional intellectual leader” throughout her time, which included the pandemic and international shocks brought on by Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.
“Gita steered the Fund’s analytical and policy work with clarity, striving for the highest standards of rigorous analysis at a complex time of high uncertainty and rapidly changing global economic environment,” Ms. Georgieva stated.
Ms. Gopinath has additionally overseen the fund’s multilateral surveillance and analytical work on fiscal and financial coverage, debt, and worldwide commerce.
Ms. Gopinath stated she was grateful for a “once in a lifetime opportunity” to work on the IMF, thanking each Ms. Georgieva and the earlier IMF chief, Christine Lagarde, who appointed her as chief economist.
“I now return to my roots in academia, where I look forward to continuing to push the research frontier in international finance and macroeconomics to address global challenges, and to training the next generation of economists,” she stated in an announcement.
