About the IMF The International Monetary Fund (IMF) is an organization of 188 countries, working to foster global monetary

cooperation, secure financial stability, facilitate international trade, promote high employment and sustainable economic growth, and reduce poverty around the world. Functions of IMF With its near-global membership of 188 countries, the IMF is uniquely placed to help member governments take advantage of the opportunities---and manage the challenges--posed by globalization and economic development more generally. The IMF tracks global economic trends and performance, alerts its member countries when it sees problems on the horizon, provides a forum for policy dialogue, and passes on know-how to governments on how to tackle economic difficulties. The IMF provides policy advice and financing to members in economic difficulties and also works with developing nations to help them achieve macroeconomic stability and reduce poverty. Marked by massive movements of capital and abrupt shifts in comparative advantage, globalization affects countries' policy choices in many areas, including labor, trade, and tax policies. Technical assistance and training to help countries improve the management of their economies. An adapting IMF The IMF has evolved along with the global economy throughout its 65-year history, allowing the organization to retain its central role within the international financial architecture As the world economy struggles to restore growth and jobs after the worst crisis since the Great Depression, the IMF has emerged as a very different institution. It increased its lending, used its cross-country experience to advise on policy solutions, supported global policy coordination, and reformed the way it makes decisions. It has three main tools at its disposal to carry out its mandate: surveillance, technical assistance and training, and lending. Surveillance The IMF promotes economic stability and global growth by encouraging countries to adopt sound economic and financial policies. The team reports its findings to IMF management and then presents them for discussion to the Executive Board, which represents all of the IMF's member countries. The changing nature of lending About four out of five member countries have used IMF credit at least once. In the first two decades of the IMF's existence, more than half of its lending went to industrial countries.

The oil shock of the 1970s and the debt crisis of the 1980s led many lower- and lower-middleincome countries to borrow from the IMF. In 2004, benign economic conditions worldwide meant that many countries began to repay their loans to the IMF. The Extended Fund Facility is used to help countries address balance of payments difficulties related partly to structural problems that may take longer to correct than macroeconomic imbalances. The IMF's membership agreed in November 2010 on a major overhaul of its quota system to reflect the changing global economic realities, especially the increased weight of major emerging markets in the global economy. Collaborating with others The IMF collaborates with the World Bank, regional development banks, the World Trade Organization (WTO), UN agencies, and other international bodies. Other areas of collaboration include assessments of member countries' financial sectors, development of standards and codes, and improvement of the quality, availability, and coverage of data on external debt. The IMF's determination of a country's balance of payments situation plays a considerable part in the WTO's assessment of trade restrictions applied in the event of balances of payments difficulties. The IMF is also involved in the WTO-led Integrated Framework for Trade-Related Technical Assistance to Least Developed Countries, and IMF staff contribute to the work of the WTO Working Group on Trade, Debt, and Finance. During the Great Depression of the 1930s, countries attempted to shore up their failing economies by sharply raising barriers to foreign trade, devaluing their currencies to compete against each other for export markets, and curtailing their citizens' freedom to hold foreign exchange. This breakdown in international monetary cooperation led the IMF's founders to plan an institution charged with overseeing the international monetary system---the system of exchange rates and international payments that enables countries and their citizens to buy goods and services from each other. Debt and painful reforms (1982--89) The oil shocks of the 1970s, which forced many oilimporting countries to borrow from commercial banks, and the interest rate increases in industrial countries trying to control inflation led to an international debt crisis. Ad hoc increases outside general reviews do not occur often, but the increases in quotas for 54 member countries approved under the 2008 Reform are a recent example.

The role of the SDR The SDR was created by the IMF in 1969 to support the Bretton Woods fixed exchange rate system. SDR allocations to IMF members Under its Articles of Agreement (Article XV, Section 1, and Article XVIII), the IMF may allocate SDRs to member countries in proportion to their IMF quotas. Board of Governors The Board of Governors is the highest decision-making body of the IMF. The governor is appointed by the member country and is usually the minister of finance or the head of the central bank. The Boards of Governors of the IMF and the World Bank Group normally meet once a year, during the IMF-World Bank Spring and Annual Meetings, to discuss the work of their respective institutions. The government said they had a "Plan A", a "Plan B" and a "Plan C" when it should have been self-evident that the only plan that would work was "Plan F", the IMF because no one else would give us any money. Indeed, all of Pakistan's bilateral donors (as well as the World Bank and Asian Development Bank) urged the government to enter into a Fund arrangement as a precondition of financial support.