Voting power

Voting power in the IMF is based on a quota system. Each member has a number of basic votes (each member's number of basic votes equals 5.502% of the total votes), plus one additional vote for each special drawing right (SDR) of 100,000 of a member country's quota. The special drawing right is the unit of account of the IMF and represents a claim to currency. It is based on a basket of key international currencies. The basic votes generate a slight bias in favour of small countries, but the additional votes determined by SDR outweigh this bias. Changes in the voting shares require approval by a super-majority of 85% of voting power.

The table below shows quota and voting shares for the largest IMF members

Rank IMF Member country Quota: millions of XDR Quota: percentage of the total Governor Alternate Number of votes Percentage out of total votes 1  United States 82,994.2 17.46 Steven Mnuchin Jerome Powell 831,407 16.52 2  Japan 30,820.5 6.48 Taro Aso Haruhiko Kuroda 309,670 6.15 3  China 30,482.9 6.41 Zhou Xiaochuan Yi Gang 306,294 6.09 4  Germany 26,634.4 5.60 Jens Weidmann Olaf Scholz 267,809 5.32 =5  France 20,155.1 4.24 Bruno Le Maire François Villeroy de Galhau 203,016 4.03 =5  United Kingdom 20,155.1 4.24 Rishi Sunak Andrew Bailey 203,016 4.03 7  Italy 15,070.0 3.17 Roberto Gualtieri Ignazio Visco 152,165 3.02 8  India 13,114.4 2.76 Nirmala Sitharaman Shaktikanta Das 132,609 2.64 9  Russia 12,903.7 2.71 Anton Siluanov Elvira S. Nabiullina 130,502 2.59 10  Brazil 11,042.0 2.32 Paulo Guedes Roberto Campos Neto 111,885 2.22 11  Canada 11,023.9 2.32 Bill Morneau Stephen Poloz 111,704 2.22 12  Saudi Arabia 9,992.6 2.10 Ibrahim A. Al-Assaf Fahad Almubarak 101,391 2.02 13  Spain 9,535.5 2.01 Nadia Calviño Pablo Hernández de Cos 96,820 1.92 14  Mexico 8,912.7 1.87 Arturo Herrera Gutiérrez Alejandro Díaz de León 90,592 1.80 15  Netherlands 8,736.5 1.84 Klaas Knot Hans Vijlbrief 88,830 1.77 16  South Korea 8,582.7 1.81 Kim Dong-yeon Lee Ju-yeol 87,292 1.73 17  Australia 6,572.4 1.38 Josh Frydenberg Philip Gaetjens 67,189 1.34 18  Belgium 6,410.7 1.35 Jan Smets Marc Monbaliu 65,572 1.30 19   Switzerland 5,771.1 1.21 Thomas Jordan Eveline Widmer-Schlumpf 59,176 1.18 20  Indonesia 4,648.4 0.98 Perry Warjiyo Mahendra Siregar 47,949 0.95

In December 2015, the United States Congress adopted a legislation authorising the 2010 Quota and Governance Reforms. As a result,

• all 190 members' quotas will increase from a total of about XDR 238.5 billion to about XDR 477 billion, while the quota shares and voting power of the IMF's poorest member countries will be protected.
• more than 6 percent of quota shares will shift to dynamic emerging market and developing countries and also from over-represented to under-represented members.
• four emerging market countries (Brazil, China, India, and Russia) will be among the ten largest members of the IMF. Other top 10 members are the United States, Japan, Germany, France, the United Kingdom and Italy.

Effects of the quota systemedit

The IMF's quota system was created to raise funds for loans. Each IMF member country is assigned a quota, or contribution, that reflects the country's relative size in the global economy. Each member's quota also determines its relative voting power. Thus, financial contributions from member governments are linked to voting power in the organization.

This system follows the logic of a shareholder-controlled organization: wealthy countries have more say in the making and revision of rules. Since decision making at the IMF reflects each member's relative economic position in the world, wealthier countries that provide more money to the IMF have more influence than poorer members that contribute less; nonetheless, the IMF focuses on redistribution.

Inflexibility of voting poweredit

Quotas are normally reviewed every five years and can be increased when deemed necessary by the Board of Governors. IMF voting shares are relatively inflexible: countries that grow economically have tended to become under-represented as their voting power lags behind. Currently, reforming the representation of developing countries within the IMF has been suggested. These countries' economies represent a large portion of the global economic system but this is not reflected in the IMF's decision making process through the nature of the quota system. Joseph Stiglitz argues, "There is a need to provide more effective voice and representation for developing countries, which now represent a much larger portion of world economic activity since 1944, when the IMF was created." In 2008, a number of quota reforms were passed including shifting 6% of quota shares to dynamic emerging markets and developing countries.

Overcoming borrower/creditor divideedit

The IMF's membership is divided along income lines: certain countries provide financial resources while others use these resources. Both developed country "creditors" and developing country "borrowers" are members of the IMF. The developed countries provide the financial resources but rarely enter into IMF loan agreements; they are the creditors. Conversely, the developing countries use the lending services but contribute little to the pool of money available to lend because their quotas are smaller; they are the borrowers. Thus, tension is created around governance issues because these two groups, creditors and borrowers, have fundamentally different interests.

The criticism is that the system of voting power distribution through a quota system institutionalizes borrower subordination and creditor dominance. The resulting division of the IMF's membership into borrowers and non-borrowers has increased the controversy around conditionality because the borrowers are interested in increasing loan access while creditors want to maintain reassurance that the loans will be repaid.