About 30 African finance ministers who held an inaugural meeting on March 12 on “Voice and Participation of Developing and Transition Countries in the Bretton Woods Institutions (BWI)” said on Monday in a communiqué that an African deputy MD should be considered for the International Monetary Fund.
Governors called upon the Bank and the Fund to make tangible progress on measures aimed at strengthening governance within the two institutions. They urged that the process for the selection of the heads of these institutions should be transparent and open and should take into account the views of all regions. Governors also called for additional high level African staff at the top management level of the Fund. An African Deputy managing director should be considered, the communiqué stated.
The finance ministers also called on South African President Thabo Mbeki to engage his fellow heads of state in dialogue so as to ensure Africa’s greater participation. The African Union should also engage with other developing regions to ensure that governance reforms are accelerated to make the BWIs more representative and equitable. This should include an immediate review of quota formulae.
The Governors said they regretted that over time, basic votes have declined significantly from the original level of around 11% to about 2% of total votes.
“This has resulted in diminishing the voting strength of developing countries in these institutions. Accordingly, governors recommended the restoration of these votes to at least their original level of total votes,” they said.
To improve Africa’s voting power in the International Development Association (IDA), the ministers called on African governments to make the necessary arrangements to pay in full their countries’ allocated shares by the end of March 2005.
The ministers also called for a clarification of the respective roles of IDA deputies and executive boards of the World Bank in terms of policy making and other requirements related to the use of IDA funds. They instructed their executive directors to follow up this issue.
The International Monetary Fund and the World Bank were founded at a conference at the resort of Bretton Woods in the US in late 1944 to help prevent events such as the Great Depression, which led to the rise of totalitarian regimes such as the Nazis in Germany. The single largest vote in the IMF and World Bank is that of the US and leader of the World Bank is traditionally an American, while that of the IMF is traditionally a European.
The former IMF MD, Horst Kohler, resigned at the beginning of March after he was nominated to the post of Germany’s president. The former acting MD prior to Kohler’s appointment was Stanley Fischer, who was born in Zambia, educated in South Africa, but was an American citizen. – I-Net Bridge