?The History and Establishment of the International Monetary Fund (IMF) By the end of 1944, the International Monetary Fund (IMF) was established by concerned countries who were afraid of another global depression caused by World War II. Countries such as USA, France, and Britain outlined the objective of the IMF to support member countries to maintain the value of their currencies while limiting any trade barriers and high interest rates. Besides the World Bank, the establishment of the IMF started at the conference in Bretton Woods, New Hampshire, USA, after the end of World War II. Most of the conference participants were governments who have defeated the Axis power (i.e. Nazi Germany and Imperial Japan) and were concerned about the future of Europe including the rebuilding of its’ infrastructure and the world’s financial and economic system. Since its founding, the IMF provided various loans to member countries facing financial and economic crisis. These loans were known as structural adjustment loans due to the fact that the condition of the loan dictated the country to adjust its’ economic activity in order manage or prevent its’ economic crisis. Currently, the IMF’s objectives have evolved due to globalization and a new focus towards the policy-making strategies on poverty reduction. This policy brief examines the role of the IMF in the global economy including the IMF’s governance structure, quota systems, member countries, and lending facilities while providing criticisms towards the institution. IMF and its’ governing structure Overall, the IMF governance structure consist of its member countries forming the Board of Governors (BOG), the International Monetary and Financial Committee (IMFC), Executive Board, and Managing Directors. The BOG usually comprises of member countries’ finance minister or top senior officials from the central banks. In addition, the BOG meets on an annual basis while the IMFC meets on a semi-annual basis to review the international monetary system1. The Executive Board and Managing Directors are responsible for the day-to-day operations. Managing Directors are appointed for a five-year term, and had mainly been Europeans. However, the current IMFC chairman is Tharman Shanmugaratnam who is the finance minister of Singapore. The BOG has the ultimate decision power that represents all IMF member countries. Currently, the BOG has 188 governors and 188 alternate governors from all IMF member countries. Each member country assigns one governor and one alternate governor2. The alternate governor is the substitute representative with voting rights to vote in case the primary governor is absent. As stated earlier, member countries usually appoints its finance minister, president of the central bank, or top senior government officials to the post. The appointed governor of member country is allowed to cast all votes that the country has. Furthermore, the approval and decision are finalized based on the majority votes. In terms of voting rights, the BOG uses the percentage of quotas to represent the voting rights of each member country. The IMF does not follow the basis of one nation with one vote but multiple votes are assigned to member countries. Member countries have more votes depending on their subscription, or payment, of quotas (see IMF and its quota for more detail). According to Ariel Buira’s book ‘Reforming the Governance of the IMF and the World Bank’, the author states “each member countries has 250 votes plus 1 additional vote for each SDR 100,000 of its quota3.” Currently, the IMF website indicated the total quotas is US$362 billion with the total number of votes of 2,519,762, of which the US holds 16.75%, China holds 3.81% and Thailand holds 0.60%4. This is voting rights shows a huge difference between member countries. Hence, member countries with lesser votes may not have significant influences in reforming the IMF. Such is the case where the US has stalled and not approved the latest IMF reforms which