In general, we believe that international governance structure should be open and transparent, and that having diversity in representation is a good thing.
At the IMF we have made a lot of effort in this area over the years. IMF voting is proportional to a quota paid-in by a country when joining the Fund. The amount of quota is mostly related to the country’s relative size in the world economy. But the voice of the smaller countries has been preserved too at the IMF through a set of votes that rebalances their small quota. In addition, the IMF carries out periodic reviews of country’s quotas to guarantee that they remain representative of the evolution of the world economy. Recently, for example, a number of emerging market economies, including China, had their voting power increased because of their progressively more important role in the world economy.
At the same time our policy recommendations have always tried to consider the historical and economic specificities of each country, without compromising the basic principles of equality of treatment among our member countries.
Finally, the IMF has also become a much more open and transparent institution over time. Most of what we do is published online and for a country that receives an IMF loan, they are required to publish the loan agreement.
Internally, we have made a lot of efforts to improve the diversity of our staff. Out of our 189 member countries, we have around 140 different nationalities represented in the staff. The IMF takes into account issues of diversity in its recruiting practices, as a diverse employees’ background allows to effectively draw on different perspectives to enhance the quality of the decision making and to deepen the relevance of our policy advice.
Answered by: International Monetary Fund (Europe Office)
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