The Global North Has Nine Times More Voting Power at the IMF Than the Global South
ECONOMICS, 10 Mar 2025
Vijay Prashad | Tricontinental: Institute for Social Research – TRANSCEND Media Service
6 Mar 2025 – In the deeply undemocratic International Monetary Fund, where a country’s voting power is tied not to its population size but to the size of its economy, the US effectively holds a veto over any major changes and moulds policies according to its whims.
Yes, the headline is accurate.
As far as the International Monetary Fund (IMF) is concerned, each person in the Global North is worth nine people in the Global South. We get that calculation from IMF data on voting power in the organisation relative to the population of the Global North and Global South states. Each country, based on its ‘relative economic position’, as the IMF suggests, is given voting rights to elect delegates to the IMF’s executive board, which makes all of the organisation’s important decisions. A brief glance at the board shows that the Global North is vastly overrepresented in this crucial multilateral institution for indebted countries.
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Tags: Anti-imperialism, Corruption, Economics, Global South, IMF, Inequality
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