GDP Center Round-Up: 2025 International Monetary Fund/World Bank Group Annual Meetings

By Tim Hirschel-Burns

With the 2025 International Monetary Fund (IMF)/World Bank Group Annual Meetings underway in Washington, D.C. from October 13-18, the agenda is noticeably light. At the meetings, the World Bank will continue to focus on its jobs strategy. At the Spring Meetings in April, US Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent called on the IMF to roll back what he termed “mission creep,” and the institution has taken some steps in that direction. While the Annual Meetings have often been an occasion for major announcements from the institution, little movement is expected this time around.

This is not down to a lack of global needs. Multiple major international commissions have highlighted the debt crisis that is stifling development. Countries that were already facing high debt servicing costs and limited fiscal space are now facing the impacts of major aid cuts and impacts from US tariffs. Development and climate investment needs remain enormous.

This summer’s Fourth International Conference on Financing for Development in Seville laid out an ambitious agenda for international financial architecture reform. Meanwhile, for the Baku to Belém Roadmap to $1.3 trillion that is due ahead of the 30th Conference of the Parties in November, multilateral development banks have been the engine of climate finance growth. To meet global goals, however, they will need more capital. Another potential source of finance is particularly timely: selling a small share of the IMF’s gold. Gold prices are at record highs of over $4,000 per ounce and the IMF holds 90.5 million ounces in reserve.

Reforming the governance of the IMF and the World Bank represents another area where progress is overdue. The IMF has not approved a realignment of quotas since 2010, which is also when the World Bank last approved major reforms. The result is that voice and representation in the institutions is well out of step with today’s world and economy. The World Bank’s shareholding review—which takes place every five years—is ongoing, while the IMF has an April 2026 deadline to approve principles to guide governance reform discussions. Against this backdrop, China is playing an increasingly influential role in global economic governance, particularly as a provider of overseas development finance.

Below, find the latest research and commentary from the Boston University Global Development Policy Center (GDP Center) on a development-centered approach to climate change, the case for IMF gold sales, China and the global economic order and more.

Putting Development First: Climate Change and the International Financial Architecture

There is a vanishing window to limit global warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius. Meeting this urgent challenge will require a tremendous mobilization of resources for a major investment push toward new economic growth paths that are low-carbon, socially inclusive and climate-resilient.

Over the past four years, the Task Force on Climate, Development and the International Monetary Fund, a Southern-led consortium of think tanks across the globe informed by technical papers and policy analyses, has advocated for an investment-led approach to support countries in achieving their development and climate change goals. Countries need affordable, long-term finance to pursue nationally-led green structural transformations and build resilience to climate risks. This will require the global financial safety net and the broader ecosystem of development finance institutions to work together through coherent governance.

Given the need for this systemic perspective and the persistent gaps in the existing system, the Task Force’s new strategy report doubles down and expands its mandate to include both the global financial safety net (GFSN) and development finance institutions combined, and moving forward the Task Force will be called the Task Force on Climate, Development and the International Financial Architecture. Read the report.

The Case for IMF Gold Sales

After hovering around $2,000 per ounce for most of the last half-decade, the price of gold has now topped $4,000 per ounce. Currently, the IMF holds 90.5 million ounces of the metal. Selling just 10 percent of these holdings would generate enough funds to offset this year’s foreign-aid cuts.

Such a move is not without precedent. The IMF has sold gold several times, most recently in 2009-10. The Fund used the proceeds from that sale to create an endowment account that complements IMF revenue and subsidizes the Poverty Reduction and Growth Trust, its concessional lending arm for low-income countries.

A new op-ed by Tim Hirschel-Burns and Marina Zucker-Marques argues the case for selling a small share of the IMF’s gold is even stronger today. The funds could help support cash-strapped developing countries, without requiring any donor contributions. And by placing them in an endowment account, the IMF could create a long-term, sustainable source of concessional financing for these countries. Read the op-ed and read the related policy brief.

A Challenging Imperative: IMF Reform, the 17th Quota Review and Increasing Voice and Representation for Developing Countries

Quotas are at the core of the IMF’s finances and governance. Beyond serving as the IMF’s primary funding source to support IMF lending and operations, quotas shape members’ access to financing, allocation of Special Drawing Rights (SDRs) and voting power.

This year, the IMF stands at a crossroads as it undergoes its 17th General Quota Review (GQR). Without an increase in quotas, the IMF will struggle to fulfill its mission of preventing and mitigating balance of payments crises and ensuring financial stability. However, applying the quota formula—agreed upon by major shareholders and the broader membership in 2008 (under the 14th GQR)—appears politically unfeasible in the current environment.

As the IMF moves toward its 17th GQR, IMF members face a difficult proposition: how can they boost financial resources for crisis response while also reforming governance to maintain legitimacy and credibility?

A recent report by Maia Colodenco, Florencia Asef Horno and Marina Zucker-Marques explores ways to better align the 17th GRQ with the growing economic importance of emerging market and developing economies (EMDEs), while also increasing their voice and representation in IMF governance. They examine the trade-offs between different options for achieving this. Read the report and read the summary blog.

Book Launch: China and the Global Economic Order

More than any time since their founding in 1944, the IMF and the World Bank, known as the Bretton Woods Institutions (BWIs), are undergoing important changes. China has played a significant role in driving those changes such that a new global economic order may be emerging.

In their new book China and the Global Economic Order, Gregory T. Chin and Kevin P. Gallagher explore how China is playing a pivotal role in transforming the BWIs and creating a new global economic order. Published by Cambridge University Press in its Global China series, the book traces the evolution of China’s engagement within the BWIs from 1980, when China re-entered, through 2025.

Using a combination of new qualitative findings and quantitative datasets, Chin and Gallagher demonstrate that China has adopted an evolving approach toward the BWIs, initially acting as a ‘rule-taker’ during its first two decades as a member, later emerging as a ‘rule-shaker’ within these institutions and ultimately becoming a new ‘rule-maker’ outside of the BWIs. Read the book.

Reviving Chinese Development Finance in the Global South

The multilateral system is falling short in mobilizing the level and composition of capital flows necessary for countries in the Global South to raise living standards and avoid the catastrophic costs of climate change.

Rather than channeling a stepwise increase in resources, net capital flows to emerging market and developing countries have turned negative. This predicament would have been much worse if not for the emergence of Chinese overseas finance, yet it too has turned net negative in recent years. The resumption of payments on a significant amount of external debt that China had suspended during the COVID-19 pandemic, together with the lack of overall borrowing space in the Global South, have exacerbated the current predicament.

A new working paper by Rebecca Ray, Kevin P. Gallagher, Zheng Zhai, Marina Zucker-Marques and Yan Liang puts Chinese development finance in the context of recent net negative transfers and presents a five-point program for how and why China should revive overseas development finance to the Global South. Read the working paper.

Read the original post on BU's Global Development Policy Center's site.