Washington, April 15 (IANS): The managing director of the International Monetary Fund (IMF), Kristalina Georgieva, said she was “confident” that the financial organization would distribute a new distribution of special drawing rights (SDRs) to member countries by mid-August.
“This is a remarkable demonstration of multilateralism” that IMF membership has agreed to support a new $ 650 billion SDR allocation, the largest in IMF history, Georgieva said in an exclusive interview with Xinhua.
“By comparison, in the midst of the global financial crisis, membership has allocated $ 250 billion to help countries deal with the effects of this crisis,” she said.
Georgieva said she had pledged by the end of June to make a proposal for the new allocation of SDRs to the IMF’s board of directors.
Once the proposal is approved, it will be submitted to the IMF’s board of directors for a final vote.
“Given that we are all under pressure to act to get out of the crisis, I am confident that sometime in the summer, by mid-August, the new distribution will be distributed to our membership,” she added.
Georgieva’s statement comes after financial officials from the G20 economies called on the IMF earlier this month to prepare for a new SDR allocation, while agreeing to extend debt relief for the world’s poorest countries until the end of the month. 2021
Established by the IMF in 1969, the SDR is an international reserve asset to supplement members’ official reserves.
It can be exchanged between governments for freely usable currency when needed.
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