The IMF Proudly Presents.... " Threat To The International Monetary System" Part Three

The IMF activated the so-called New Arrangements to Borrow in April of this year for a six-month period. The IMF's board, which met informally on the issue late Friday afternoon, would have to approve re-activation of the resource pool if the fund wants to tap it beyond September.

 

" A large majority of the board members are in favor of re-activating the NAB," as a precautionary measure, one of the people said. The board is scheduled to formally approve activation next Friday, the person said.

 

David Lipton, first deputy managing director at the IMF, said recently in a private meeting that keeping the NAB available may be necessary in coming months given Europe's debt meltdown, people familiar with the matter said. The crisis is entering a dangerous new phase as the risk of Greece defaulting rises and Italy and Spain's sovereign debt has come under attack.

 

Lipton didn't specify whether the facility needed to be tapped for a specific country, the people said. The IMF declined to comment.

 

According to the IMF, the pool of supplementary resources are only to be activated when " needed to forestall or cope with a threat to the international monetary system." The pool can only be activated by the board after IMF managing director makes a special request.

So far, the IMF has already allocated nearly $7 billion from the NAB. In total, the NAB can provide up to about $580 billion in supplemental resources to the IMF, but only around $331 billion is currently available for use. Based on how much cash the fund can commit to within the next year--around $394 billion--without the special kitty, the IMF would only have around $60 billion on hand.

The special resource base, funded through bilateral loans from countries such as the U.S. and China, was designed as a temporary measure. It is expected to be largely replaced by an agreement late last year by the fund's board of directors to increase quotas, the share of contributions that each member must give to fund IMF lending.

The board of governors agreed in December to roughly double quotas from around $375 billion to around $750 billion. But out of the 187 member countries, only 17 have legally accepted the increase, including Japan, the U.K. and Korea. Most of the countries with the biggest quotas, such as the U.S., China and Germany, haven't yet gone through the legal process, such as parliamentary or congressional approval, need to hand over their promised dues.