Developing countries have opposed a new voting formula meant to increase their sway in the International Monetary Fund, but acknowledge it will likely end up being endorsed by a majority of the IMF's 185 member nations.
The group of around 50 countries represented by Egypt, Iran, Indonesia, Russia and Kenya, which speaks for 19 African nations, said the proposal did not sufficiently shift voting power from dominant industrial countries toward developing nations, which it was meant to do.
"The whole idea of the quota review was that the share of emerging and low-income countries would increase at the expense of industrial nations," one board official said. "That clearly hadn't happened because the direct shift of quotas from industrial nations is nothing more than 2.7 percent, most of that coming from the tripling of basic votes," the official added.
The change has been forced by the growing influence of emerging economies in Asia and elsewhere, and in particular China that is now the world's fourth-largest economy. The formula, a complex calculation of economic data, determines members' voting power and their so-called quotas or cash subscriptions to the global lender.
The IMF's No 2 official, John Lipsky, told Reuters this week he was hopeful of an agreement but acknowledged some countries would gain at the expense of others. "The challenge is to find a formula that 185 countries will agree on," said Lipsky, IMF first deputy managing director.
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