There have been impassioned calls from many world leaders in recent days for the IMF to boost its power to extend finance to the world’s poorest countries with an expansion of fund members’ special drawing rights, which form part of their international reserve assets.
The goal is to help low-income countries boost health and other fiscal spending as coronavirus spreads. Under the IMF’s allocation mechanism, many of the poorest nations, with the smallest reserves, would see the largest proportionate increase in spending power, although the largest absolute increases would go to bigger countries.
The IMF Executive Board and the G20 have announced large, though probably insufficient, packages of debt relief. They have also indicated that they would like to explore proposals to increase allocations of SDRs.