International Monetary Fund - Voting Power

Voting Power

Voting power in the IMF is based on a quota system. Each member has a number of “basic votes" (each member's number of basic votes equals 5.502% of the total votes), plus one additional vote for each Special Drawing Right (SDR) of 100,000 of a member country’s quota. The Special Drawing Right is the unit of account of the IMF and represents a claim to currency. It is based on a basket of key international currencies. The basic votes generate a slight bias in favor of small countries, but the additional votes determined by SDR outweigh this bias.

The table below shows quota and voting shares for IMF members (Attention: Amendment on Voice and Participation, and of subsequent reforms of quotas and governance which were agreed in 2010 but are not yet in effect.)
IMF Member country Quota: millions of SDRs Quota: percentage of the total Governor Alternate Number of votes Percentage out of total votes
USA 42,122.4 17.69 Timothy Geithner Ben Bernanke 421,961 16.75
Japan 15,628.5 6.56 Koriki Jojima Masaaki Shirakawa 157,022 6.23
Germany 14,565.5 6.12 Jens Weidmann Wolfgang Schäuble 146,392 5.81
France 10,738.5 4.51 Pierre Moscovici Christian Noyer 108,122 4.29
UK 10,738.5 4.51 George Osborne Sir Mervyn King 108,122 4.29
China 9,525.9 4.00 Zhou Xiaochuan Yi Gang 81 151 3.65
Italy 7,055.5 3.24 Vittorio Grilli Ignazio Visco 95,996 3.81
Saudi Arabia 6,985.5 2.93 Ibrahim A. Al-Assaf Fahad Almubarak 70,592 2.80
Canada 6,369.2 2.67 Jim Flaherty Mark Carney 64,429 2.56
Russia 5,945.4 2.50 Anton Siluanov Sergey Ignatyev 60,191 2.39
India 5,821.5 2.44 P. Chidambaram Duvvuri Subbarao 58,952 2.34
Netherlands 5,162.4 2.17 Klaas Knot Hans Vijlbrief 52,361 2.08
Belgium 4,605.2 1.93 Luc Coene Marc Monbaliu 46,789 1.86
Switzerland 3,458.5 1.45 Thomas Jordan Eveline Widmer-Schlumpf 35,322 1.40
Australia 3,236.4 1.36 Wayne Swan Martin Parkinson 33,101 1.31
Mexico 3,625.7 1.52 José Antonio Meade Agustín Carstens 36,994 1.47
Spain 4,023.4 1.69 Luis de Guindos Luis M. Linde 40,971 1.63
Brazil 4,250.5 1.79 Guido Mantega Alexandre Tombini 43,242 1.72
South Korea 3,366.4 1.41 Jaewan Bahk Choongsoo Kim 34,401 1.37
Venezuela 2,659.1 1.12 Jorge Giordani Nelson José Merentes Diaz 27,328 1.08
The rest of 166 countries 62,593.8 28.39 respectivul respectivul 667 438 31.16

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    “All voting is a sort of gaming, like checkers or backgammon, with a slight moral tinge to it, a playing with right and wrong, with moral questions; and betting naturally accompanies it. The character of the voters is not staked. I cast my vote, perchance, as I think right; but I am not vitally concerned that right should prevail. I am willing to leave it to the majority.”
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