At a press briefing in Washington, IMF Managing Director Kristalina Georgieva said that countries will need to brace for 'tough times' if oil prices continue to remain high. She spoke with Bloomberg’s Francine Lacqua on the sidelines of the meeting about the IMF's call to downgrade its global growth forecast, and why markets need to be more cautious in this era of ongoing uncertainty. - Central banks should resist the urge to hike interest rates in response to the Middle East crisis as this could damage economic output, according to International Monetary Fund Managing Director Kristalina Geor...
Questions asked in this interview
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0:35And even if there's a ceasefire that stays and there's some kind of diplomatic resolution, is the market discounting the real impact on the price of oil and therefore inflation?
1:51So, I mean, does that mean that the market is mispricing it, that all this market exuberance is actually misplaced?
It depends on the longevity of the war in the Middle East and the scale of the infrastructure destruction that I was seeing in the countries over there. And that is the big unknown. We now have a ceasefire. I pray it turns into a durable peace, and in that case, we can see a somewhat faster recovery. But the uncertainty has been profound, and we all need to learn to operate in an environment of science and permanent uncertainty.
And even if there's a ceasefire that stays and there's some kind of diplomatic resolution, is the market discounting the real impact on the price of oil and therefore inflation?
Well, let me just say that even if the war ends tomorrow, it would take quite some time for the recovery to kick in. Not only because of the infrastructure destruction. Tankers are slow-moving vessels. A tanker that is today, it would take 40 days to reach the Pacific Islands. So we have to keep in mind that the impact is already baked in.
I think part of the reason is because there is a high concentration of financial assets in the United States. The US economy is doing well. It is relatively not so impacted because the US is an exporter, not an importer, and that creates that picture of dynamism and vibrancy. But I can tell you that's not the story of the rest of the world. In the rest of the world, already there is a lot of pain.
What it means is that markets are geared by events in the largest economy that are really positive. The United States is the only large economy that has high productivity growth, and markets are seeing that technology optimism is here. Markets are rushing on it.
I would argue yes, because what we are seeing in terms of supply chain disruptions is already quite significant. And with every day that passes, that tanker is not leaving for a destination, and that delays the rebalance of the world economy.
Georgieva, K. (2026, April 15). IMF's Georgieva Says Recovery Will be 'Some Way Off' Even if War Ends Tomorrow [Interview transcript]. Bloomberg Podcasts. CEOInterviews.AI. https://ceointerviews.ai/interview/3065299/
MLA
Kristalina Georgieva. "IMF's Georgieva Says Recovery Will be 'Some Way Off' Even if War Ends Tomorrow." Bloomberg Podcasts, 15 Apr. 2026. Transcript, CEOInterviews.AI, https://ceointerviews.ai/interview/3065299/.
BibTeX
@misc{georgieva2026_3065299,
author = {Kristalina Georgieva},
title = {IMF's Georgieva Says Recovery Will be 'Some Way Off' Even if War Ends Tomorrow},
howpublished = {Interview transcript, Bloomberg Podcasts. CEOInterviews.AI},
year = {2026},
month = {apr},
url = {https://ceointerviews.ai/interview/3065299/},
note = {Speaker-attributed transcript with timestamps}
}
