IMF chief says $100 bn target met for climate, poverty funds

The head of the International Monetary Fund said Thursday that rich countries had met a target of reallocating $100 billion of funds from the institution to battle climate change and poverty in developing countries.

“We meet the target, we do have the 100 billion,” Kristalina Georgieva told reporters at a climate financing summit in Paris. Ahead of the summit the IMF had still needed another $40 billion to hit the target.

The plan, first announced in 2019, was for wealthier countries to recycle $100 billion in IMF special drawing rights (SDRs) for vulnerable economies.

SDRs are foreign exchange reserve assets awarded to countries based on how much they contribute to the IMF.

The idea, which some European countries resisted, was for wealthier countries to lend these foreign exchange reserve assets to the IMF, which could in turn lend them to developing economies.

Ahead of the summit, France and Japan announced that they would redeploy 30 percent of their SDRs for this purpose.