Annual meetings of the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and the World Bank are normally sedate affairs, gathering as they do ministers of finance and development, central bankers, CEOs and academics from the 188 IMF and World Bank member countries. But this year, will tensions between developing countries and the world’s wealthy economies over issues such as representation at the IMF and the amount of attention that the fund has been paying to Europe over the past two years boil over? Will there be fireworks when the grey-suited delegates converge on the headquarters of the IMF and the World Bank in Washington, DC, from October 11 to 13?
Come what may, some drama is expected to be injected into the meetings by a possible (and highly probable) late-September deal in the US Congress on the US budget, to which a 2010 IMF reform is attached. This, among other things, increases the voting power of emerging economies on the IMF executive board, which are currently significantly under-represented relative to their growing importance in the world economy.