IMF staff buyout draws more interest than expected

By Lesley Wroughton

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Around 600 International Monetary Fund employees have requested buyouts under a plan aimed at cutting 380 jobs, officials said on Monday.

IMF staff and board members said the number was at least 585, with some saying it is as high as 620, about a quarter of the fund's 2,400 full-time staff.

The job cuts are part of broader plans to modernize the Washington-based institution and attract new staff to expand its oversight of global financial and capital markets, while also downsizing and cutting costs.

IMF spokesman Masood Ahmed confirmed that the number of employees that have requested buyouts was "somewhat in excess" of the 380 jobs that needed to be cut.

Ahmed said the result of the buyout offer would be made on Tuesday.

He said the large response to the buyout meant that no-one would be forced out of their job involuntarily. However, it was unclear if the IMF would extend the buyout beyond the 380 jobs it intends to trim.

"Even with this number of volunteers, which are somewhat in excess of the 380 we had identified, the challenge is to focus the fund in terms of doing the kinds of things the membership finds most useful for their needs going forward," he told Reuters.

Domenico Lombardi, president of the Oxford Institute for Economic Policy and a former IMF board member, said IMF staff morale has run low for several years as the fund has undergone internal changes amid a shifting global economic environment.