Domenico Lombardi, an economics expert at the Brookings Institute and president of the Oxford Institute for Economic Policy, believes that Iceland should continue to work towards stabilizing its economy first, and that the loans from the IMF should be supervised.
The top tier of the International Monetary Fund has still not made a decision on when they plan to make a final assessment of Iceland, the next step in receiving a loan. Many Icelandic politicians and political pundits have brought up the possibility of cutting off any cooperation with the IMF. With so many Icelanders suspicious of the organization, Minister of Finance Steingrímur J. Sigfússon has emphasized that Iceland will not work with the IMF “a day longer than necessary.”
Lombardi worked on a report for the IMF, RÚV reports, where he mentioned among other things the establishment of an independent supervisory power in Iceland to oversee the application of an IMF loan. With such a supervisory power in place, Lombardi argues, transparency in how the loan is used would increase, as would Iceland’s economic credibility.