The publicly announced amounts total $362.3 billion, leaving $68 billion in the pledges that Lagarde said she has received from China, Brazil, Russia and India. Officials offered no breakdown of those amounts and also did not disclose any possible timing of when these countries might make their pledges public.
French Finance Minister Francois Baroin told reporters Friday that the U.S. decision not to contribute was not a surprise given the difficulty the Obama administration would have winning congressional support for increased U.S. support to the IMF.
The support is coming in the form of loans the countries will make to the IMF which will be able to use those resources to make loans to countries facing financial difficulties. While most other nations do not have to get approval from their legislatures for these loans to be made by their central banks, the U.S. Federal Reserve cannot extend credit to the IMF without approval by Congress.
In addition to discussing fund raising, the G-20 officials heard a report Friday from Spanish Finance Minister Luis de Guindos. He told reporters the G-20 finance officials expressed their support for the reform measures Spain is taking to deal with its economic troubles.
___
Associated Press reporters Desmond Butler, Matthew Pennington and Luis Alonso contributed to this report.
Copyright 2012 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.







Reader Comments