The Wall Street Journal quotes Dinu Patriciu Eurasia Center Resident Senior Fellow Anders Åslund on plans by Ukraine’s Western allies to accelerate changes to the International Monetary Fund’s lending plan:
The IMF for years has been considering revising its lending-into-arrears policy, so the current move isn’t exclusively targeted to the Ukrainian circumstances. In an April 2013 paper on debt-restructuring polices, for example, IMF staff said the evolving role of major emerging markets in the global economy required the fund to reconsider its policy.
Anders Åslund, a senior fellow at the Atlantic Council, said the fund was originally thinking about ensuring China wouldn’t be able to foil IMF lending to member countries seeking bailouts as Beijing ramped up loans to Africa and other nations.