Transcript of a Press Briefing by Caroline Atkinson, Director, External Relations, IMF
Washington, D.C.
Thursday, August 27, 2009
On the operational side, you've got used to talk about SDR allocation and we want to let you know that tomorrow, August 28, the IMF will officially implement the recently approved general allocation of special drawing rights, equivalent to about $250 billion. This was the allocation initially pressed for at the G-20 meeting in the spring in London. It was formally approved by the IMF's Board of Governors on August 7 and is designed to provide more global liquidity to the world economy by supplementing our members' foreign exchange reserves. And it is of course a prime example of the quick multilateral response to the financial crisis.
The equivalent of nearly $100 billion of this $250 billion will go to emerging markets and developing countries, and over $18 billion to low-income countries. This general allocation is made in proportion to members' existing quotas and will count immediately toward their reserves. Members can choose either to hold them in their reserves or if they wish to, sell all or part of their allocations to others in order to finance immediate hard currency imports. That is possible, and likewise it's possible to enter into an agreement to buy these SDRs from another member.
Separately, we are about to implement on September 9 a special allocation, a one-time allocation, of 21.5 billion SDRs, about US$33 billion. This allocation, which is sometimes called the Fourth Amendment Allocation because it required an amendment to the Fund's Articles of Agreement, will mean that every member country has an SDR allocation. Until now, countries—which is about a fifth of the membership which had joined the Fund after 1981, had not received any allocation, so now this will rectify that imbalance. More information and background on these two SDR allocations is available on our website at www.imf.org, and there are also fact sheets and Q's and A's there.
Washington, D.C.
Thursday, August 27, 2009
On the operational side, you've got used to talk about SDR allocation and we want to let you know that tomorrow, August 28, the IMF will officially implement the recently approved general allocation of special drawing rights, equivalent to about $250 billion. This was the allocation initially pressed for at the G-20 meeting in the spring in London. It was formally approved by the IMF's Board of Governors on August 7 and is designed to provide more global liquidity to the world economy by supplementing our members' foreign exchange reserves. And it is of course a prime example of the quick multilateral response to the financial crisis.
The equivalent of nearly $100 billion of this $250 billion will go to emerging markets and developing countries, and over $18 billion to low-income countries. This general allocation is made in proportion to members' existing quotas and will count immediately toward their reserves. Members can choose either to hold them in their reserves or if they wish to, sell all or part of their allocations to others in order to finance immediate hard currency imports. That is possible, and likewise it's possible to enter into an agreement to buy these SDRs from another member.
Separately, we are about to implement on September 9 a special allocation, a one-time allocation, of 21.5 billion SDRs, about US$33 billion. This allocation, which is sometimes called the Fourth Amendment Allocation because it required an amendment to the Fund's Articles of Agreement, will mean that every member country has an SDR allocation. Until now, countries—which is about a fifth of the membership which had joined the Fund after 1981, had not received any allocation, so now this will rectify that imbalance. More information and background on these two SDR allocations is available on our website at www.imf.org, and there are also fact sheets and Q's and A's there.