If any organisation emerged with its stature enhanced from last week's lacklustre Group of Seven economic summit in Munich, it was the International Monetary Fund.

Mr Michel Camdessus, the IMF's managing director, made an unprecedented appearance at a G7 meeting to brief finance ministers about his negotiations in Moscow on Russia's economic reform programme. The backing given by the G7 communique to co-operation between the IMF and Russia showed how the big industrial democracies have effectively subcontracted responsibility for helping Russia and other former Soviet republics integrate into the world economy to the IMF.

But is the IMF's high-profile role in Russia such a good thing? Is the fund itself the right organisation to deal with Russia's problems? Could it be that the western industrial powers are overestimating its ability to keep Russia on track? Is there a danger that it will be overwhelmed by the huge difficulties to be tackled in Russia and emerge from the experience with its prestige and effectiveness diminished? The failure of the Russian government to achieve economic policy goals set five months ago must cast some doubt on whether it will meet the performance targets agreed with Mr Camdessus just before he went to Munich.

Recent research into the IMF policies and operations over the past decade by the Alexis de Tocqueville Institution, a US think tank, also raises the question as to whether the fund is best suited to the task of promoting economic reform in Russia.

Mr Camdessus agreed in Moscow to release a first Dollars 1bn (Pounds 520m) tranche of IMF credits to Russia in return for sharp cuts in its projected budget deficit and inflation by December. Russia will reduce its inflation to less than 10 per cent a month by the end of 1992 from 15 per cent (and rising) at present. It plans to cut its domestically financed fiscal deficit from 17 per cent of gross domestic product to 5 per cent in the same period.

It was not clear in Munich how this would be achieved. The necessary fiscal and monetary measures will be introduced over the coming weeks. The IMF has been assured that most will be enacted by presidential decree, presumably after parliament breaks up for the summer this week.

But are these goals realistic in the light of past experience? In late February Russia's government and central bank agreed a programme of stabilisation and reform that envisaged a sharp decline in inflation to a range
of between 1 per cent and 3 per cent a month by the fourth quarter of this year when the budget deficit would be around zero. This programme appeared to be on track until upset by decisions of the Russian parliament in the spring.

Things may be different this time. The IMF has been careful to strengthen the hand of the Russian finance ministry in drawing up the new programme so that it can be considered as a Russian government programme. If the fulsome tribute made by President Boris Yeltsin in his Munich press conference to Mr Yegor Gaidar, his prime minister, means anything, the Russian government should be able to count on Mr Yeltsin's support in pushing ahead with economic reform. There is some hope that the Russian people and parliament, looking as they are over the abyss at hyperinflation, will pull back and put up with the conditions that IMF support will entail.

There is little doubt that the conditions will be painful. Moreover, the IMF will have leverage because of the staged nature of its support. Another Dollars 3bn of credits will not be released before autumn when Russia will have been obliged to meet further economic performance targets and sort out its monetary relations with other republics and especially those staying in the rouble zone.  The promised Dollars 6bn rouble stabilisation fund is further off. It depends on progress to currency stability and is unlikely before 1993. This drip-feed technique gives the IMF a strong negotiating position in the event of Russia backsliding on its targets.

That Russia could well backslide is suggested by the IMF Assessment Project carried out by the Alexis de Tocqueville Institution of Arlington nearWashington. According to Mr Gregory Fossedal, the institution's chairman, achieving currency stabilisation and inflation reduction have been among the weakest areas of fund performance. The institution's study of 90 IMF programmes between 1980 and 1991 also found that the successful achievement of monetary and fiscal targets depended crucially on the implementation of fiscal and monetary policies as planned.

Mr Fossedal argues that the IMF is most successful in countries with long-standing democratic and capitalist traditions. He wonders whether the fund can be the 'bold, energetic catalyst' needed to rebuild the former communist states.

'The last time the West faced a challenge of of this magnitude, after the Second World War, the IMF, the World Bank and the UN Rehabilitation and Relief Agency all spent two years attempting to revive the economy of western Europe, to no avail,' he says. Harking back to the introduction of the Marshall Plan, he says: 'Only when a special, self-terminating executive agency was funded, created, debated openly, co-ordinated with joint commissions in the recipient countries, and staffed by the businessmen and investors who would be called upon to support it, did the more focused efforts of the fund and the Bank begin to bear fruit.

Mr Fossedal would like to see a new Marshall Plan for Russia with a new organisation that would move reforms ahead rapidly and have a Dollars 50bn annual budget.

But herein lies the rub. One of the reasons the IMF has so much responsibility thrust upon it is that the western industrial nations either will not or cannot produce such financial support.

As Mr Brian Mulroney, the Canadian prime minister, pointed out last week, the US devoted 1.2 per cent of its gross national product to the Marshall Plan.  So far, the G7's contribution to the former Soviet Union amounts to just 0.2 per
cent of its combined GNP.