LONG America fails to ratify more votes to emerging nations Thanks to US, IMF reforms hit deadlock

Washington, April 13: Reforms to the International Monetary Fund (IMF) have hit a deadlock despite a declaration from global financial chiefs that they would move forward without the United States if it fails to ratify the changes by year-end, a G20 official said on Sunday.

The inability to proceed with giving emerging markets a more powerful voice at the IMF and shoring up the lender’s resources appeared the most contentious issue for officials from the Group of 20 leading economies and the representatives for all IMF member nations who met over the weekend.

In a final communique, G20 finance ministers and central bankers said they were “deeply disappointed” with the US delay.

“Some said that we need to give the US more space,” the official, who participated in the G20 talks and spoke on condi- tions of anonymity, said. “I say we are at a dead end.”

Any attempt to break the package of reforms, proposed by the G20 in 2010, would be disastrous not only for the United States, but for the whole group, he said, because most countries have already gone through the ratification procedures.

“If you pull the 2010 package apart, you will have to start anew,” the official said. “And this factor cannot be over- come. How to overcome it? Nobody wants to go again through this process for the second time.” Other officials were not immediately available for comment.

Emerging markets, handicapped by the lack of reforms, expressed exasperation over the weekend that a four-year wait for the reforms is asking too much of them. But it is unclear what moves could be taken to overcome the impasse.

There could be some ad hoc measures taken to achieve at least some of the governance overhaul for the global lender without formal US approval.

Most of the solutions, however, giving the structure of decision making at the IMF, could not be implemented without the US approval. US treasury secretary Jack Lew said US President Barack Obama’s administration would do its best to push IMF quota reforms through the Congress this year. — Reuters Rail Coach Factory (RCF) at Kapurthala has set a record in production, by rolling out 1701 coaches in the financial year 2013-14 as against its installed capacity of 1,500 coaches per annum.

During the year, RCF produced 23 different variants of coaches for highend trains like Rajdhani, Shatabdi, Double Decker and other mail and express trains. Besides its own production, 150 unfurnished coaches were also turned out for RCF at Rae Bareli, which is a new production unit of Indain Railways, where production activity has just commenced.

RCF in association with DRDE, has developed a highly cost effective indigenous technology for treatment of faecal waste in coaches. It has started fitting these bio toilets in all new coaches. Over 2,000 bio-toilets have been fitted in 2013-14. This will help in providing an almost maintenance free and a low cost solution to the problem of open defecation on the railway tracks.

“In order to bring world class railway technology to the common man, LHB design stainless steel coaches are now being proliferated in non-AC mail/express trains also and 121 such coaches have been produced during the year,” RCF said in a statement.