US hindering reforms at IMF: Russian official

A top Russian economic official has criticized the United States for its failure to authorize reforms at the International Monetary Fund (IMF), stating the incumbent US administration lacks the necessary teeth in the Congress to press for the measures. 

"The IMF reform has been dragging on for three years due to the position of the United States or to be more precise the US Congress," Vadim Lukov, Ambassador-at-Large of the Russian Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Executive Secretary of the Interagency Commission on Russia's participation in the G20 and BRICS told reporters in Moscow on Wednesday. 

BRICS is a group of five major emerging national economies including Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa - 

"President Barack Obama's Administration does not seem to mind this ratification but, alas, its actions are limited because it does not have a majority in the Senate," Lukov added. 

"The IMF reform should go on nonetheless but it would have to be unblocked for starters," he remarked, adding, "We are expecting 2015 to be a year of important IMF decisions to be made with the support and participation of BRICS countries."

On March 17, US Treasury Secretary Jack Lew warned that Washington’s stalling of IMF reforms adds to the appeal of lower income countries to search for funding from other institutions. 

"It's not an accident that emerging economies are looking other places.... They are frustrated that, frankly, the United States has stalled a very mild and reasonable set of reforms in the IMF," Lew commented.

The crucial IMF reforms would both realign the power of members on the IMF executive board as well as emerging countries like China and India, and double the capital resources the institution uses to support countries wrestling with financial woes.  

Washington's block on the reforms has prompted proposals of cutting the US voting power nearly in half, and drawing up a plan to "delink" the two components of the reforms in a way that could allow them to go ahead without requiring the US Congress to endorse them. 

"The link between these two elements is unnecessary as each pursues independent objectives that can be delivered separately. Delinking them would require the support of the US administration but not ratification by US Congress," Brazil's executive director at the IMF, Paulo Nogueira Batista, said in the proposal. 

"The delinking proposal is constructive and simple and could clear the way for the continuation of the IMF reform process," Batista noted.  

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