IMF member states have agreed to increase their contributions to the global lender and grant Africa a third seat on its board, the International Monetary Fund announced Saturday in Marrakech, Morocco.
These two points were part of the stated objectives of the annual meetings of the IMF and the World Bank which are being held for the first time since 1973 on the African continent.
“There has been an agreement on a significant increase in quotas by the end of the year,” said Nadia Calvino, the Spanish Minister of Economy who chairs the IMF financial committee, at a press conference. .
The quotas, which are based on the size of a country's economy, determine the amount of funds a state must provide to the IMF, its voting power and the maximum amount of loans it can obtain.
This week, the Managing Director of the IMF, Kristalina Georgieva, and the President of the World Bank, Ajay Banga, urged their members to intensify the financing of institutions so that they can better support States in the fight against poverty and climate change.
The agreement on quotas is “very comforting”, welcomed Ms Georgieva. The objective is to “financially strengthen the Fund so that we are able to intervene in the event of an additional shock”.
Asked if the IMF would change the distribution of votes, the managing director said: "members agreed that this would be the next step and that there would be a clear path and a plan to get there."
Currently, the distribution of quotas favors advanced economies, particularly European countries, to the detriment of large emerging countries, led by China and India, which have been calling for reform of the system for several years.
But Western countries, while they say they are open in principle, are in reality reluctant to the idea, fearing to see China's role within the IMF strengthened.
“At a certain point, a review of the quotas will be inevitable,” said the governor of the Bank of France, François Villeroy de Galhau, on Wednesday in Marrakech.
But "the emerging countries which will benefit" from such a reform, "notably China, must also accept the common rules of the game", he insisted.
Although the distribution of votes was not changed, the IMF agreed to expand its board of directors from 24 to 25 members, in order to give an additional seat to Africa, which until now held two .
“Despite all the difficulties, I can only congratulate our members for having found this path of solidarity, on which hundreds of millions of people depend,” said Ms Georgieva, stressing that the decision had been “unanimous”.
Madagascar: new day of demonstrations in Antananarivo
New day of mobilization, this Saturday in the Malagasy capital while the High Constitutional Court (HCC), the highest court in Madagascar, ordered Thursday the postponement of the first round of the presidential election, initially scheduled for November 9, to November 16. Supporters of outgoing president Andry Rajoelina, wearing the orange color of his party, marched through the streets of Antananarivo.
In other districts of the city, supporters of the collective of 11 candidates for the presidential election, as well as opponents, were also in the streets, to denounce "an institutional coup d'état" before the presidential election aimed at maintaining Rajoelina in power. The opposition denounces a plot by those in power to favor Rajoelina and has called for protests almost daily since the beginning of the month.
Andry Rajoelina, 49, came to power in 2009 following a mutiny. Since his election in 2018, political tensions continue to affect the large island in the Indian Ocean.