“My forecast was that we needed to double our resources,” IMF Managing Director Dominique Strauss-Kahn told reporters after a G-20 meeting near London today. “A commitment to do so has been made. It may even go further.
Strauss-Kahn has lobbied for the fund’s cashpile to rise to $500 billion from $250 billion after being inundated with loan requests from Pakistan to Hungary. A European government official said they agreed to “more than double” the pool, though ministers have yet to say how much they will increase it by.
“It takes months to get the technical details worked out,” said Strauss-Kahn and they may not be agreed by the time heads of government meet in London next month. Still, “the resources we have now are enough to wait.”
The U.S. Treasury has also sought an expansion of the IMF’s supplementary borrowing program by up to $500 billion.
“The G-20 supports our proposal for a substantial increase to emergency IMF resources,” Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner said.
The fund is currently able to borrow about $50 billion -- from 26 mostly wealthy member countries -- through these special financing arrangements. If that proposal won international support, the IMF could have the ability to lend $750 billion and possibly more.
In the past six months, the IMF has approved $16.4 billion for Ukraine, $15.7 billion for Hungary, $10.4 billion for Latvia, $2.5 billion for Belarus, $2.1 billion for Iceland, $7.6 billion for Pakistan and $516 million for Serbia -- a total of about $55 billion. Turkey is negotiating an IMF loan accord, and Romania has expressed an interest in borrowing.
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