IMF Support for COVID-19 Recovery

In the midst of a crisis, Special Drawing Rights (SDRs) are sitting idle in many countries’ central banks. With a political push and some technical innovation, they can be put to good use at the multilateral development banks (MDBs) to accelerate the fight against climate change.

The effort to recycle unneeded SDRs from wealthy countries to poor countries was dealt a major setback in an omnibus spending deal recently passed by the US Congress. The final measure failed to include language authorizing the US Treasury to recycle 15 billion SDRs, worth about $21 billion, to the ...

The IMF’s promising initiative to establish its Resilience and Sustainability Trust (RST)—a new way to lend to developing countries—is on track to be agreed and operational in 2022.

With Russia’s attack on Ukraine raging and most of the world imposing severe financial sanctions on Russia, attention has turned to whether Russia could use its allocation of special drawing rights to bolster its foreign reserves and finance its war effort. The answer is yes, in principle, but ...

On August 23rd, 2021, the IMF allocated $650 billion of Special Drawing Rights to its member countries, in proportion to their quotas. Yet many decried that the distribution of the new allocation was not aimed at those countries that needed it the most. Something had to be done, quickly, t...