Japan`s Shinohara to assume IMF deputy post in early March+

WASHINGTON, Nov. 3 Kyodo -
Japan's former top financial diplomat Naoyuki Shinohara will take the position
of deputy managing director of the International Monetary Fund in early March,
a senior IMF official said Monday.
Shinohara, 56, Japanese vice finance minister for international affairs until
July, will replace Takatoshi Kato, also from Japan, to fill one of the three
deputy posts under IMF Managing Director Dominique Strauss-Kahn.
The Washington-based institution's Executive Board last week approved
Strauss-Kahn's proposal made nearly a month earlier to install Shinohara as one
of his deputies, the official told Kyodo News.
At the same time, Kato's term in office has been extended from the original
finish-date of last Saturday. Kato has been in the deputy position since
February 2004, when he took over from Japan's Shigemitsu Sugisaki.
The official said there was resistance to Japan's continued hold on the deputy
post, with emerging economies centering on Brazil, Russia, India and China,
which together are called BRIC, calling for the job to be given to a developing
nation.
In the meantime, low-income countries demanded the post be made available to an
African nation, added the official, who spoke on condition of anonymity.
The calls were made as part of developing nations' efforts to have a greater
voice and representation in international financial institutions, as well as to
have their heads and senior leadership named through an open and transparent
selection process.
Strauss-Kahn, a French national, currently has three deputies -- First Deputy
Managing Director John Lipsky of the United States, and Deputy Managing
Directors Murilo Portugal of Brazil and Kato.
Born in 1953, Shinohara joined the Japanese Finance Ministry in 1975 after
graduating from the University of Tokyo. He later received a master's of public
administration from the Woodrow Wilson School at Princeton University.
He held some overseas posts, including head of the Washington, D.C.
Representative Office of the Japan Center for International Finance, an
affiliate to the ministry, and Japan's executive director at the Manila-based
Asian Development Bank.
Shinohara became senior deputy director general of the ministry's International
Department in October 2005, director general of the department in July 2006 and
vice finance minister for international affairs in July 2007, succeeding
Hiroshi Watanabe.
As Japan's top financial diplomat, he played a pivotal role in developing and
implementing the policy responses from the world's second-largest economy to
the global crisis in the international finance sphere.
Shinohara participated in a plethora of international financial meetings,
including of the IMF's policy-setting International Monetary and Financial
Committee, as well as of the Group of Seven and Group of 20.
He has been a special adviser to the Japanese finance minister since stepping
aside to let Rintaro Tamaki take the post of vice finance minister for
international affairs.
The G-7 of major industrialized nations consists of Britain, Canada, France,
Germany, Italy, Japan and the United States. The G-20 comprises the G-7 and
major emerging economies like India and China.
==Kyodo