By Stefan Boscia
Kwasi Kwarteng will travel to Washington, DC this week to meet with the International Monetary Fund (IMF) for the first time as chancellor.
Kwarteng is travelling to the US for the IMF’s annual meeting, the first of its kind in-person since Covid, where he is expected to meet with its managing director Kristalina Georgieva.
He will have to defend the £43bn in tax cuts in the government’s mini-Budget, which were funded by government borrowing.
The chancellor’s meeting with IMF bosses, comes after the institution criticised his recent mini-Budget after its release and advised a U-turn on some of the details.
“We do not recommend large and untargeted fiscal packages at this juncture, as it is important that fiscal policy does not work at cross purposes to monetary policy,” the IMF warned.
Kwarteng and Prime Minister Liz Truss did U-turn on the most controversial aspect of the mini-Budget – the abolition of the top 45p rate of Income Tax.
The Treasury has also promised that the Office for Budget Responsibility (OBR) will soon release its estimates of the fiscal package – something Georgieva last week endorsed.
“What is going to be presented would be based on careful assessment and on data that says you can or you cannot do what you’re proposing,” she told CNBC.
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