(Reuters) – The International Monetary Fund (IMF) wants to boost its lending resources to $1 trillion from $750 billion in order to prevent future financial crises, the Financial Times said on Monday.
The paper, without citing sources, said the IMF wants to agree financing deals in advance that will be specially tailored to individual countries, rather than respond to crises with conditional loan packages.
“Even when not in a time of crisis, a big fund, likely to intervene massively, is something that can help prevent crises,” IMF Managing Director Dominique Strauss-Kahn told the FT.
“Just because the financing role decreases, doesn’t mean we don’t need to have huge firepower… a $1,000 billion fund is a correct forecast,” he said.
The FT said South Korea, which currently chairs the Group of 20 leading economies, is hoping to convince the G20 countries to back the plan at the next summit in Seoul in November.
(Reporting by Karolina Tagaris; Editing by Michael Urquhart)