- IMF Managing Director Kristalina Georgieva at the G20 Leaders’ Summit in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil
By Kristalina Georgieva
I start with a message of gratitude to the leaders in this room – over these past years, your trust in the Fund has allowed us to provide record-high support to members hit by a series of exogenous shocks. We have injected over $1 trillion in liquidity and reserves and offered timely policy analysis and advice – contributing to the resilience of the global economy.
First, we have fortified the financial strength of the Fund by building strong financial buffers to meet record-high needs of our members: we agreed to increase our quota resources by 50 percent; we reached and exceeded the G20 goal to lend $100 billion in SDRs to low-income and vulnerable middle-income countries; we created a new long-term concessional lending instrument – the Resilience and Sustainability Trust; we reduced the costs for our borrowers through reforms of our charges and surcharges; and we agreed to deploy IMF income to double our lending capacity for low-income countries.
Second, we promote macroeconomic stability and growth, all the more important today when medium-term growth prospects are the lowest in decades. Debt is high and rising and geopolitical tensions, regional conflicts, and protectionism threaten to weigh on global prosperity. We support our members faced with the difficult task of rebuilding fiscal buffers to contain debt and prepare for future shocks, and in their pursuit of strong reforms to lift economic growth prospects. And we join forces with others in critical multilateral initiatives, such as on debt, where we work with the World Bank on the G20 Common Framework, the Global Sovereign Debt Roundtable, and a new proposal to help countries faced with liquidity challenges.
Third, we recognize that in a changing world, the Fund must be more inclusive and representative. This is why we wholeheartedly embrace governance and operational reforms that advance these objectives.
On November 1, our board of directors added a third chair for Sub-Saharan Africa, to give more voice to a region that has been underrepresented for a long time.
We are expanding our global network of training centers and regional offices to bring us closer to our members.
We are significantly increasing the diversity of our staff and management.
Finally, as agreed by our members, the IMF executive board is working to develop, by June 2025, possible approaches as a guide for further quota realignment, including through a new quota formula, under the 17th General Review of Quotas.
Governance reforms must continue and we count on your ongoing support.
IMF Communications Department
