The International Monetary Fund said on Friday its 189 member countries had agreed to maintain the IMF's $1 trillion in total lending resources while delaying changes to its shareholding structure to as late as December 2023, Reuters reported. IMF Managing Director Kristalina Georgieva announced the decision at the Fund's and World Bank's annual meetings, saying that the initiative will provide confidence that the IMF can adequately support member countries as they deal with slowing global growth. The IMF's steering committee endorsed the decision, which calls for completion of a package to ensure that the fund maintains its lending resources. The IMF's $250 billion crisis fund, the New Arrangements to Borrow, first launched in 1998 and massively increased during the financial crisis a decade later, was due to expire in 2022. Bilateral lending arrangements, totaling about $440 billion, were due to expire at the end of 2019. The agreement struck on Friday will extend the IMF's current bilateral arrangements until the end of 2020, providing time for governments to approve a longer-term renewal of these as well as the crisis fund. IMF members last altered quotas in 2010, agreeing to increase China's and other emerging markets' voting power and shrinking that of European countries. But the changes were not implemented until 2016, in part due to approval delays by the U.S. Congress.
