The International Monetary Fund (IMF) Friday recommended an overhaul of the institution's governance structure to realign quota and voting shares of member countries with their relative weight and role in the global economy.
The reform will thus enhance the participation and voice of emerging markets and low-income countries in the 185-member world body, said the IMF in a statement. The IMF Executive Board has recommended that the Fund's Board of Governors approve the reform package under voting procedures scheduled to be concluded by April28, 2008.
IMF Managing Director Dominique Strauss-Kahn said that if the proposals are combined with what was negotiated at Singapore, the total amount of voting rights transferred to the developing and emerging countries would amount to 2.7 percentage points.
"Today's agreement is a major step forward in the modernization of the fund and our efforts to adjust its structures to the dynamic and changing realities of the global economy, but it is only a first step," he said.
"We are creating a more flexible system for quota and voice, which involves further changes over time as the relative positions of countries in the world economy evolve," he added.
The proposed reform package will increase nominal quotas ranging from 12 to 106 percent for 54 countries, with some of the largest gains going to dynamic emerging market economies; the aggregate shift in quota shares for these 54 members amounts to 4.9 percentage points, said the IMF.
The package will further result in voting share increases for 135 countries, reflecting both the increases in quotas and the increase in basic votes. The aggregate shift in voting shares for these 135 countries will amount to 5.4 percentage points, including substantial increases for low-income country members, the 185-nation institution said.
But many countries expressed disappointment at the reform package.
"We're not happy about the proposal because it falls short of what we had expected, hoped for and we had strived for," India's Executive Director to the IMF, Adarsh Kishore, told reporters.
His Chinese counterpart to the IMF, Ge Huayong, also agreed that the proposed reform package does not reflect the weight of the emerging markets in the world economy, while urging the IMF to take actions to raise the shares of underrepresented members.
Oxfam International, the humanitarian organization, said the reform package represent "minimal" change for the IMF structure.
"After years of debate, a proposal that gives only a small increase in quota share for a handful of developing countries -- and none for the rest -- would be more than disappointing," Oxfam's policy advisor Elizabeth Stuart said.
"The Europeans need to give up their overly dominant position," she said, noting this is "a step, though a small one, toward the long journey of governance and credibility reform in the IMF."
Source: Xinhua
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