IMF Activates Standing Borrowing Arrangements for Further Six-Month Period

The International Monetary Fund (IMF) announced today that its Executive Board has formally completed the process of activation of the New Arrangements to Borrow (NAB) for a further six-month period from October 1, 2011 to the end of March 2012. The expanded NAB became effective on March 11, 2011 and was activated on April 1 for the maximum period of six months (see Press Releases No. 11/74 and No. 11/109).

The NAB is a standing set of credit lines under which 36 members or their institutions have committed to provide supplementary resources to the IMF totaling up to SDR 363.6 billion (about US$571 billion¹). Activation requires the consent of participants representing 85 percent of total credit arrangements eligible to vote and the approval of the IMF’s Executive Board. Since the April 1 activation, some SDR 27.7 billion have been committed to Fund-supported programs for which NAB resources could be drawn, and actual drawings under the NAB amounted to SDR 6.8 billion (US$11 billion).

The NAB is supplementary to quota resources, which are made up of the quota subscriptions each member pays upon joining the Fund and in the context of quota increases thereafter, broadly based on its relative size in the world economy. The IMF is a quota-based institution, and the Fund’s Board of Governors has emphasized that each member of the Fund commits to use its best efforts to complete the steps required to make the quota increase under the 14th General Review of Quotas effective no later than the Annual Meetings in 2012.

Useful links

Factsheet: IMF Standing Arrangements to Borrow

April 1, 2011 Press Release on Activation of the expanded NAB

April 25, 2009 IMFC Communiqué

Factsheets: IMF Quotas ; Where the Fund gets its Money