What We Do
IMF Governance Reform
IMF Governance Reform
Reforming the governance practices of the IMF and other IFIs is an integral component of our policy agenda.
Fourth Pillar Consultation on IMF Governance (2009)
In September 2008, Dominique Strauss-Kahn, the Managing Director of the International Monetary Fund (IMF), laid out a four-pillar approach to reforming the governance structure of the IMF. The Four Pillars: 1st Pillar: IMF Independent Evaluation Office of the IMF; 2nd Pillar: A working group of the IMF Executive Directors; 3rd Pillar: A committee of eminent persons; 4th Pillar: Direct interaction with civil society organizations. The IMF invited New Rules for Global Finance to coordinate the inputs and interaction with CSOs during the consultation period.
An independently run website was set up to encourage and collect CSO input, which fed directly into the IMF staff’s preparation of governance reform papers for IMF Executive Board discussions before the IMF-World Bank Annual Meetings in October. The process culminated in a meeting between IMF Managing Director Dominique Strauss-Kahn and CSOs during the 2009 Annual Meetings in Istanbul, Turkey. Comment process is over for the consultation, but you can view the submitted content at www.thefourthpillar.org.
Bringing Balance to the IMF Reform (2008-2009)
New Rules’ project, “Bringing Balance to the IMF Reform Debate”, consisted of a series of regional meetings in 2008 among IMF “client” countries, — those that borrow from the IMF or are reliant on its policy prescriptions or approval.
The Bringing Balance to the IMF Reform Debate Initiative brought together finance ministers, central bankers, and senior advisors from the regions, who elaborated their priorities for a reformed IMF in terms of its roles, core functions, representation and accountability. The constructive recommendations which emerged from this extensive consultative process were integrated into the synthesizing global conference hosted by CIGI in Waterloo, Ontario in July 2008. The conference’s discussions and sets of recommendations called for the IMF to reform its policy requirements, surveillance reports, representation, and accountability, in order to increase the confidence of both emerging and developing countries in the Fund’s usefulness.
High Level Panel on IMF Board Accountability (2006-2007)
New Rules for Global Finance Coalition convened a panel with diverse backgrounds to assess how the governance and performance of the IMF could be improved. New Rules invited a diverse group of individuals to participate in a High-Level Panel to identify ways to move the Executive Board toward greater accountability. The Panel focused its recommendations on steps that were both feasible in the short-term and promised to contribute to significant change in the accountability of the IMF over the long-term. For this reason, the
Democratic Governance and Parliamentary Oversight (2005-2006)
The Democratic Governance and Parliamentary Oversight (DGPO) Project seeks to develop a global network of leading civil society organizations, academic centers, and parliamentary groups to promote promising strategies for enhancing the democratic governance and parliamentary oversight of the international financial institutions (IFIs), namely the World Bank, the International Monetary Fund (IMF), and regional development banks. Partners include Rede Brazil, INFID Indonesia, Intercultural Resources Center, India, and ISODEC Ghana.