The International Monetary Fund is set to receive a large boost to its firefighting capability next month as the Group of 20 finance ministers agreed “on the urgent need to increase IMF resources very substantially”.
Having requested a doubling of the fund's $250bn (€194bn, ￡179bn) resources to fight the financial crisis in emerging markets, Dominique Strauss-Kahn, the fund's managing director, said on Saturday: “A commitment to do so has been made. It may even go further.”
Alistair Darling, the UK chancellor of the exchequer, said that the deal was “always something to be left to the leaders' conference in a couple of weeks time”, while officials added that this gave the April summit a concrete agreement in the bank in case other specific deals cannot be secured.