Imf Promises Voting Changes

The IMF’s head banker outlined broad reform measures Wednesday, couching his plans in soothing promises to give poor countries a bigger voice in globalization.

Organizers of protests aimed at disrupting next week’s meetings of the International Monetary Fund and its sister institution, the World Bank, were not mollified, however.

Topping the list at the IMF are plans to reassess the influential voting rights of a handful of rich countries and the goal of giving special loan packages to 10 more of the world’s poorest nations by the end of the year, IMF Managing Director Horst Koehler said.

“I haven’t come to turn the fund upside down, but there is a need for further change and even accelerated change,” Koehler told reporters ahead of the meetings, which formally open here next Tuesday.

The IMF has been busy trying to shed its reputation as an old boys’ club of global financiers - at least partially to prevent violent riots such as those that trashed Seattle during last year’s summit of the World Trade Organization.