International Monetary Fund history

The governors decided to locate the organization’s permanent headquarters in Washington, D.C., where its 12 original executive directors first met in May 1946.

On 1 March 1947, the IMF began its financial operations, and on 8 May France became the first country to borrow from it.

In 1958, the Bretton Woods system became fully functional as currencies became convertible.

Loan conditions, or “conditionality,” have been explicitly authorized by the Articles of Agreement since 1968.

SDRs are an international reserve asset created by the IMF in 1969 to supplement members’ existing reserve assets of foreign currencies and gold.

In August 1971 United States President Richard Nixon ended this system of pegged exchange rates by refusing to sell gold to other governments at the stipulated price.

The end of the Bretton Woods System (1972–81)

The changes to the IMF articles of agreement reflecting these changes were ratified in 1976 by the Jamaica Accords.

Debt and painful reforms (1982–88)

The increase reflected, in particular, the attainment of political independence by many African countries and more recently the 1991 dissolution of the Soviet Union because most countries in the Soviet sphere of influence did not join the IMF.

In May 2010, the IMF participated, in 3:11 proportion, in the first Greek bailout that totaled €110 billion, to address the great accumulation of public debt, caused by continuing large public sector deficits.

The first female managing director, Christine Lagarde of France, was appointed in June 2011.

As of January 2012, the largest borrowers from the IMF in order were Greece, Portugal, Ireland, Romania, and Ukraine.

On 25 March 2013, a €10 billion international bailout of Cyprus was agreed by the Troika, at the cost to the Cypriots of its agreement: to close the country's second-largest bank; to impose a one-time bank deposit levy on Bank of Cyprus uninsured deposits.

At the end of March 2014, the IMF secured an $18 billion bailout fund for the provisional government of Ukraine in the aftermath of the Revolution of Dignity.

In March 2020, Kristalina Georgieva announced that the IMF stood ready to mobilize $1 trillion as its response to the COVID-19 pandemic.