IMF ends meeting without consensus and quota review is postponed

The board of directors of the IMF (International Monetary Fund) did not reach a consensus at its annual meeting. Once again, it was impossible to prepare an official statement about the meeting, which would need to be approved by all of its 190 member countries. Instead, a summary was released, as has been the practice since the Russian invasion of Ukraine, in February 2022. Here is the full document (PDF, in English – 289 kB).

Without an agreement, the discussion on the reform of the Fund, with the review of quotas, ended up being postponed until 2025, a proposal that has been defended by the Minister of Finance, Fernando Haddad. The idea is to use the fund’s shares in a way that better reflects the economic weight of each member.

After the meeting, the director of the International Monetary and Financial Committee of the IMF, Nadia Calviño, stated in an interview that there is agreement to formulate proposals to seek a “possible” review of quotas in 2024.

According to Calviño, who is Spain’s Economy Minister, there was no consensus on drafting a joint statement due to disagreements between the countries over the language that would be used to refer to the conflicts between Russia and Ukraine and between Israel and Hamas.

The IMF quota system works as follows: countries that give more money to the fund have greater voting power when deciding where the monetary fund’s investments go.

In practice, the quota review would give emerging countries, such as Brazil, greater decision-making power at the IMF. India and China would also benefit, which the United States does not like.