Slightly more than 90 per cent of the necessary votes at the biannual meeting in Singapore were in favour of the mini-reform the First Managing Director, Rodrigo de Rato, of the International Monetary Fund (IMF) had proposed to its members. There will a modest increase of the relative weights (“quotas” in IMF jargon) for China, Mexico, South Korea and Turkey, implying that countries like Germany and the United States will experience a small drop in their relative weights. The reform is meant to be only a fi rst step, followed by a more far-reaching reform in 2008 to give more weight to the main clients of the IMF, the developing and emerging economies in Asia, Eastern Europe, Latin America and Africa. This is a welcome idea but problems are showing up already.
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