22 U.S.C. § 286ll — Fund policy changes

(a) Policy changes within the IMF The Secretary of the Treasury must instruct the U.S. Executive Director of the IMF ("the Fund") to regularly and vigorously promote these proposals in program talks and quota-increase negotiations: (1) Poverty alleviation, reducing barriers to progress, and environmentally sound policies (A)(i) Considerations of poverty relief and removing barriers to economic and social progress should be built into every Fund program and every Article IV consultation. (ii) Every nation with a Fund program and an active World Bank or International Development Association lending program should prepare a "Policy Framework Paper," and having one should be required before the Fund gives that nation new loans. (iii) Every Policy Framework Paper should spell out the main poverty, economic, and social steps the borrowing nation needs to take. This part (or a summary with specific measures and timing) should be shared when the paper goes to the Bank's and Fund's Executive Directors. (iv) When deciding whether to lend Fund resources to a borrower, the Fund should consider how committed that borrower is to addressing the issues in (iii). (v) The Fund should set up procedures so it can work with the Bank to judge how well these measures are working — at the level of policy, project design, monitoring, and reporting, both at the institutions and in the borrowing nations. (B)(i) The Fund should be pushed to make further progress toward environmentally sound policies and programs. (ii) The Fund should build environmental considerations into every Fund program, including Article IV consultations. (iii) The Fund should be encouraged to support nations that want to track natural resources in their national income accounts. (iv) The Fund should be encouraged to help and cooperate fully with statistical research by the OECD and the United Nations, to help build a general system for accounting for the depletion of natural resources. (v) The Fund should be encouraged to consider and adopt, where appropriate, changes to its own national income reporting to match any such new, generally accepted system. (2) Policy audits (A) The Fund should run periodic audits that systematically review the policy prescriptions it has recommended and required, in the areas of poverty and the environment. (B) These audits should: (i) determine whether the Fund's own objectives were met; and (ii) evaluate the social and environmental effects of carrying out those policies. (C) These audits should have access to all of the Fund's ongoing programs and activities, and be able to review, country by country, the effects of Fund-supported programs on poverty, economic development, and the environment. (D) These audits should be made public where appropriate, with due respect for confidentiality. (3) Ensuring policy options that increase the productive participation of the poor The Fund should set up procedures that make sure future Fund-approved economic reform programs focus on policy options that increase how much the poor can productively take part in the economy. (4) Public access to information (A) The Fund should set up procedures for the public to access information. (B) These procedures should try to give the public access while still respecting appropriate confidentiality. (C) Policy Framework Papers and the documents supporting them, prepared by the Fund's mission to a country, are examples of documents that should be made public at the right time and in the right way. (b) Progress report Each annual report of the National Advisory Council on International Monetary and Financial Policies must describe: (1) What the U.S. Executive Director and other officials have done to convince the Fund to adopt the proposals in subsection (a) — through formal initiatives before the Fund's Board and management, through bilateral talks with other member nations, and through any further quota-increase negotiations. (2) How much progress the Fund has made in putting the proposals in subsection (a) into practice. (c) Study The Secretary of the Treasury must instruct the U.S. Executive Director of the Fund to urge the Fund to: (1) explore ways to involve more important ministries, national development experts, environmental experts, free-market experts, and other legitimate experts and representatives from the loan-recipient country in developing Fund programs; and (2) report on the status of the Fund's efforts to do this.