By David Lawder and Andrea Shalal
WASHINGTON (Reuters) -The International Monetary Fund could sell a golf course it owns in Maryland, U.S. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent said on Wednesday, repeating his call for the global lender to focus on its core mission of helping countries in trouble.
“They can sell the golf course,” Bessent told reporters, when asked about concrete changes he expected to see at the IMF now that his former chief of staff, Dan Katz, had moved to the global lender as its No. 2 official.
“We’re going to refocus,” said Bessent, who spoke during the annual meetings of the IMF and World Bank in Washington. “They’re going to go back to their core mission. And their core mission is of providing liquidity, providing backstops, and being useful as an intervention when … countries are in trouble.”
Bessent said it was time for the IMF to stop “this kind of dalliance in these climate policies or social engineering,” but did not elaborate.
The U.S. Treasury secretary mapped out his priorities for the global lender in April, calling on both the IMF and the World Bank to refocus on their core missions of macroeconomic stability and development, arguing that “mission creep” into vanity projects such as climate change had eroded their effectiveness.
Bessent said he did not know if President Donald Trump knew about the IMF-owned Bretton Woods Recreation Center in Germantown, Maryland, adding, “I don’t think he’d be happy. I think he’d probably ask me if it’s a good course.”
The IMF established the 18-hole golf course in 1968 on a 286-acre property for its staff, retirees and their immediate family members, as well as staff members at the World Bank and other international organizations, at a time when racial segregation was common in the Washington area. It also offers memberships to local residents.
(Reporting by David Lawder and Andrea Shalal; editing by Paul Simao)
