Proposed areas for reform

The TWN listed key points on the reform of the international financial and monetary architecture, saying that to enhance the role of the IMF, the following reforms to the international fund should be undertaken:

-- The reform of governance and voting: significant and meaningful increases in voice and quota for developing countries on an expedited basis than the 2011 review agreed to in the G20 communiqué, issued in London early this month.

-- An end to undemocratic leadership: the head of the IMF should be selected on an open merit-based candidacy open to all member nationalities, as committed to in the G20 communiqué.

-- The reform of IMF staff: the staff of the IMF are mainly from one school of thought (neo liberal). A significant proportion of staff should be from other schools of thought.

-- Elimination of procyclical policy-based lending: the IMF's balance-payments loans should not come attached to policy conditionality that is contradictory and procyclical, constraining development objectives and needs.

-- Limited mandate of IMF: the IMF's role should be to provide liquidity in times of payments crisis. It should end its disastrous role in formulating and imposing policies involving trade, investment, privatization, sectoral policies, structural policies in the international financial field.

Although the importance of and the need for IMF reform is increasingly recognized in the wake of the current global financial crisis, various players do not agree on the program and focus of the reform, observers here said.

The IMF reform is a complicated and sensitive issue and it will not generate any major specific progress in this regard at the end of the two-day annual spring sessions of the IMF and the World Bank, which started on Saturday.

(Xinhua News Agency April 26, 2009)