Draft for Comments: Deadline for Comments is August 29, Report to IMF EDs for the Fourth Pillar Consultation on the Reform of IMF Governance

DRAFT FOR COMMENTS: DEADLINE for CHANGES: Saturday, August 29

Dear Friends and Colleagues,

We have posted the preliminary draft report of the Fourth Pillar (Civil Society) Consultation on the Reform of IMF Governance. We are asking for comments to this paper to be made now through August 29. This report will be delivered to the IMF Executive Directors on September 1, 2009. If you have comments or changes please send them with adequate time to ensure they are incorporated. Please make comments as specific as possible.

The draft report is posted at http://thefourthpillar.ning.com/forum/topics/draft-for-comments-report-to. Please make comments to the paper in the discussion, if necessary you may also email them to imf_governance@new-rules.org.

We would like to thank Domenico Lombardi who took the lead in writing the paper based on surveying the content recevied by email and posted on http://thefourthpillar.ning.com.

New Rules is also planning a meeting in Istanbul, Turkey during the annual meetings of the IMF and World Bank. If you will be traveling to Istanbul for the meeting and have accreditation, please let us know so we can be sure to send you the meeting details.

Sincerely,

Jo Marie Griesgraber
Executive Director, New Rules for Global Finance

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PREFACE

This document responds to the request of the Managing Director to New Rules to present a summary of civil society recommendations on IMF Governance Reform. This input constitutes the fourth “pillar” of a process of gathering input: the first pillar was the report of the IMF Independent Evaluation Office on IMF Governance (2008); the second pillar was the report of a Committee of the Board, headed by Mr. Thomas Moser, ED from Switzerland; and the third pillar was the report of the commission of experts head by Mr. Trevor Manuel, then Finance Minister of South Africa.

This is the second of two papers produced through the fourth pillar process. The first, a summary of recommendations, was submitted to the Executive Board prior to its July 21, 2009 discussion of IMF Governance Reform. Like the first paper, this one is also derived from consultations with representatives of the many CSOs that are actively participating in the Fourth Pillar process (See: www.thefourthpillar.ning.com). Additional input for this paper comes from six videoconferences with civil society participants from academia, NGOs, and the private sector, in: 1) Nairobi and Johannesburg; 2) Lima and Montevideo; 3) Mexico City and Buenos Aires; 4) Bishkek and Almaty; 5) Ghana; and 6) Jakarta and New Delhi. In most cases the cities were self-selected by CSO participants offering to coordinate interested colleagues in their respective city.

Like the first document, this document is not a consensus document. It was written by Domenico Lombardi, President of Oxania at Oxford University, at the request of New Rules. Its principal audience is the Executive Board of the IMF. It seeks to consolidate the views and recommendations that surfaced through submissions to www.thefourthpillar.org, discussed during the six videoconferences, and to a lesser extent, emailed directly to New Rules or to Mr. Lombardi. (Obviously not every good idea is incorporated herein, and we apologize for inevitable omissions.) Whereas the first paper focused on short-term governance reforms, many of which are possible within the existing IMF Articles, this paper discusses many of those same recommendations in greater detail, and explores some of the significant additional reforms needed to transform the IMF into the institution the 21st Century financial system requires.

It should be noted that every input from every videoconference participant insisted on the centrality of holding the IMF accountable for policies and the conditions that accompany IMF programs in borrowing countries. The issue of conditionality may appear to be beyond the parameters of the IMF’s normal understanding of “governance”; accountability is not.

Jo Marie Griesgraber
New Rules for Global Finance Coalition