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International Monetary Fund

The International Monetary Fund (IMF) is a major financial agency of the United Nations, and an international financial institution funded by 190 member countries, with headquarters in Washington, D.C. It is regarded as the global lender of last resort to national governments, and a leading supporter of exchange-rate stability. Its stated mission is "working to foster global monetary cooperation, secure financial stability, facilitate international trade, promote high employment and sustainable economic growth, and reduce poverty around the world."

Established in 27 December 1945 at the Bretton Woods Conference, primarily according to the ideas of Harry Dexter White and John Maynard Keynes, it started with 29 member countries and the goal of reconstructing the international monetary system after World War II. It now plays a central role in the management of balance of payments difficulties and international financial crises. Through a quota system, countries contribute funds to a pool from which countries can borrow if they experience balance of payments problems. The IMF works to stabilize and foster the economies of its member countries by its use of the fund, as well as other activities such as gathering and analyzing economic statistics and surveillance of its members' economies.

The current managing director (MD) and chairperson of the IMF is Bulgarian economist Kristalina Georgieva, who has held the post since 1 October 2019. Indian-American economist Gita Gopinath, previously the chief economist, was appointed as first deputy managing director, effective 21 January 2022. Pierre-Olivier Gourinchas was appointed chief economist on 24 January 2022.

Functions
According to the IMF itself, it works to foster global growth and economic stability by providing policy advice and financing to its members. It also works with developing countries to help them achieve macroeconomic stability and reduce poverty. The rationale for this is that private international capital markets function imperfectly and many countries have limited access to financial markets. Such market imperfections, together with balance-of-payments financing, provide the justification for official financing, without which many countries could only correct large external payment imbalances through measures with adverse economic consequences. The IMF provides alternate sources of financing such as the Poverty Reduction and Growth Facility.

Upon the founding of the IMF, its three primary functions were:
 * to oversee the fixed exchange rate arrangements between countries, thus helping national governments manage their exchange rates and allowing these governments to prioritize economic growth, and
 * to provide short-term capital to aid the balance of payments and prevent the spread of international economic crises.
 * to help mend the pieces of the international economy after the Great Depression and World War II as well as to provide capital investments for economic growth and projects such as infrastructure.

The IMF's role was fundamentally altered by the floating exchange rates after 1971. It shifted to examining the economic policies of countries with IMF loan agreements to determine whether a shortage of capital was due to economic fluctuations or economic policy. The IMF also researched what types of government policy would ensure economic recovery. A particular concern of the IMF was to prevent financial crises, such as those in Mexico in 1982, Brazil in 1987, East Asia in 1997–98, and Russia in 1998, from spreading and threatening the entire global financial and currency system. The challenge was to promote and implement a policy that reduced the frequency of crises among emerging market countries, especially the middle-income countries which are vulnerable to massive capital outflows. Rather than maintaining a position of oversight of only exchange rates, their function became one of surveillance of the overall macroeconomic performance of member countries. Their role became a lot more active because the IMF now manages economic policy rather than just exchange rates.

In addition, the IMF negotiates conditions on lending and loans under their policy of conditionality, which was established in the 1950s. Low-income countries can borrow on concessional terms, which means there is a period of time with no interest rates, through the Extended Credit Facility (ECF), the Standby Credit Facility (SCF) and the Rapid Credit Facility (RCF). Non-concessional loans, which include interest rates, are provided mainly through the Stand-By Arrangements (SBA), the Flexible Credit Line (FCL), the Precautionary and Liquidity Line (PLL), and the Extended Fund Facility. The IMF provides emergency assistance via the Rapid Financing Instrument (RFI) to members facing urgent balance-of-payments needs.

Surveillance of the global economy
The IMF is mandated to oversee the international monetary and financial system and monitor the economic and financial policies of its member countries. This activity is known as surveillance and facilitates international co-operation. Since the demise of the Bretton Woods system of fixed exchange rates in the early 1970s, surveillance has evolved largely by way of changes in procedures rather than through the adoption of new obligations. The responsibilities changed from those of guardians to those of overseers of members' policies.

The Fund typically analyses the appropriateness of each member country's economic and financial policies for achieving orderly economic growth, and assesses the consequences of these policies for other countries and for the global economy. For instance, The IMF played a significant role in individual countries, such as Armenia and Belarus, in providing financial support to achieve stabilization financing from 2009 to 2019. The maximum sustainable debt level of a polity, which is watched closely by the IMF, was defined in 2011 by IMF economists to be 120%. Indeed, it was at this number that the Greek economy melted down in 2010.

In 1995, the International Monetary Fund began to work on data dissemination standards with the view of guiding IMF member countries to disseminate their economic and financial data to the public. The International Monetary and Financial Committee (IMFC) endorsed the guidelines for the dissemination standards and they were split into two tiers: The General Data Dissemination System (GDDS) and the Special Data Dissemination Standard (SDDS).

The executive board approved the SDDS and GDDS in 1996 and 1997, respectively, and subsequent amendments were published in a revised Guide to the General Data Dissemination System. The system is aimed primarily at statisticians and aims to improve many aspects of statistical systems in a country. It is also part of the World Bank Millennium Development Goals (MDG) and Poverty Reduction Strategic Papers (PRSPs).

The primary objective of the GDDS is to encourage member countries to build a framework to improve data quality and statistical capacity building to evaluate statistical needs, set priorities in improving timeliness, transparency, reliability, and accessibility of financial and economic data. Some countries initially used the GDDS, but later upgraded to SDDS.

Some entities that are not IMF members also contribute statistical data to the systems: A 2021 study found that the IMF's surveillance activities have "a substantial impact on sovereign debt with much greater impacts in emerging than high-income economies".
 * Palestinian Authority – GDDS
 * Hong Kong – SDDS
 * Macau – GDDS
 * Institutions of the European Union:
 * The European Central Bank for the Eurozone – SDDS
 * Eurostat for the whole EU – SDDS, thus providing data from Cyprus (not using any DDSystem on its own) and Malta (using only GDDS on its own)

Conditionality of loans
IMF conditionality is a set of policies or conditions that the IMF requires in exchange for financial resources. The IMF does require collateral from countries for loans but also requires the government seeking assistance to correct its macroeconomic imbalances in the form of policy reform. If the conditions are not met, the funds are withheld. The concept of conditionality was introduced in a 1952 executive board decision and later incorporated into the Articles of Agreement.

Conditionality is associated with economic theory as well as an enforcement mechanism for repayment. Stemming primarily from the work of Jacques Polak, the theoretical underpinning of conditionality was the "monetary approach to the balance of payments".

Structural adjustment
Some of the conditions for structural adjustment can include:
 * Cutting expenditures or raising revenues, also known as austerity.
 * Focusing economic output on direct export and resource extraction,
 * Devaluation of currencies,
 * Trade liberalisation, or lifting import and export restrictions,
 * Increasing the stability of investment (by supplementing foreign direct investment with the opening of facilities for the domestic market),
 * Balancing budgets and not overspending,
 * Removing price controls and state subsidies,
 * Privatization, or divestiture of all or part of state-owned enterprises,
 * Enhancing the rights of foreign investors vis-a-vis national laws,
 * Improving governance and fighting corruption,

These conditions are known as the Washington Consensus.

Benefits
These loan conditions ensure that the borrowing country will be able to repay the IMF and that the country will not attempt to solve their balance-of-payment problems in a way that would negatively impact the international economy. The incentive problem of moral hazard—when economic agents maximise their own utility to the detriment of others because they do not bear the full consequences of their actions—is mitigated through conditions rather than providing collateral; countries in need of IMF loans do not generally possess internationally valuable collateral anyway.

Conditionality also reassures the IMF that the funds lent to them will be used for the purposes defined by the Articles of Agreement and provides safeguards that the country will be able to rectify its macroeconomic and structural imbalances. In the judgment of the IMF, the adoption by the member of certain corrective measures or policies will allow it to repay the IMF, thereby ensuring that the resources will be available to support other members.

, borrowing countries have had a good track record for repaying credit extended under the IMF's regular lending facilities with full interest over the duration of the loan. This indicates that IMF lending does not impose a burden on creditor countries, as lending countries receive market-rate interest on most of their quota subscription, plus any of their own-currency subscriptions that are loaned out by the IMF, plus all of the reserve assets that they provide the IMF.

20th century

The IMF was originally laid out as a part of the Bretton Woods system exchange agreement in 1944. During the Great Depression, countries sharply raised barriers to trade in an attempt to improve their failing economies. This led to the devaluation of national currencies and a decline in world trade.

This breakdown in international monetary cooperation created a need for oversight. The representatives of 45 governments met at the Bretton Woods Conference in the Mount Washington Hotel in Bretton Woods, New Hampshire, in the United States, to discuss a framework for postwar international economic cooperation and how to rebuild Europe.

There were two views on the role the IMF should assume as a global economic institution. American delegate Harry Dexter White foresaw an IMF that functioned more like a bank, making sure that borrowing states could repay their debts on time. Most of White's plan was incorporated into the final acts adopted at Bretton Woods. British economist John Maynard Keynes, on the other hand, imagined that the IMF would be a cooperative fund upon which member states could draw to maintain economic activity and employment through periodic crises. This view suggested an IMF that helped governments and act as the United States government had during the New Deal to the great depression of the 1930s.

The IMF formally came into existence on 27 December 1945, when the first 29 countries ratified its Articles of Agreement. By the end of 1946 the IMF had grown to 39 members. On 1 March 1947, the IMF began its financial operations, and on 8 May France became the first country to borrow from it.

The IMF was one of the key organizations of the international economic system; its design allowed the system to balance the rebuilding of international capitalism with the maximization of national economic sovereignty and human welfare, also known as embedded liberalism. The IMF's influence in the global economy steadily increased as it accumulated more members. Its membership began to expand in the late 1950s and during the 1960s as many African countries became independent and applied for membership. But the Cold War limited the Fund's membership, with most countries in the Soviet sphere of influence not joining until 1970s and 1980s.

The Bretton Woods exchange rate system prevailed until 1971 when the United States government suspended the convertibility of the US$ (and dollar reserves held by other governments) into gold. This is known as the Nixon Shock. The changes to the IMF articles of agreement reflecting these changes were ratified in 1976 by the Jamaica Accords. Later in the 1970s, large commercial banks began lending to states because they were awash in cash deposited by oil exporters. The lending of the so-called money center banks led to the IMF changing its role in the 1980s after a world recession provoked a crisis that brought the IMF back into global financial governance.

In the mid-1980s, the IMF shifted its narrow focus from currency stabilization to a broader focus of promoting market-liberalizing reforms through structural adjustment programs. This shift occurred without a formal renegotiation of the organization's charter or operational guidelines. The Ronald Reagan administration, in particular Treasury Secretary James Baker, his assistant secretary David Mulford and deputy assistant secretary Charles Dallara, pressured the IMF to attach market-liberal reforms to the organization's conditional loans.

During the 20th century, the IMF shifted its position on capital controls. Whereas the IMF permitted capital controls at its founding and throughout the 1970s, IMF staff increasingly favored free capital movement from 1980s onwards. This shift happened in the aftermath of an emerging consensus in economics on the desirability of free capital movement, retirement of IMF staff hired in the 1940s and 1950s, and the recruitment of staff exposed to new thinking in economics.

21st century
The IMF provided two major lending packages in the early 2000s to Argentina (during the 1998–2002 Argentine great depression) and Uruguay (after the 2002 Uruguay banking crisis). However, by the mid-2000s, IMF lending was at its lowest share of world GDP since the 1970s.

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. As part of the bailout, the Greek government agreed to adopt austerity measures that would reduce the deficit from 11% in 2009 to "well below 3%" in 2014. The bailout did not include debt restructuring measures such as a haircut, to the chagrin of the Swiss, Brazilian, Indian, Russian, and Argentinian Directors of the IMF, with the Greek authorities themselves (at the time, PM George Papandreou and Finance Minister Giorgos Papakonstantinou) ruling out a haircut.

A second bailout package of more than €100 billion was agreed upon over the course of a few months from October 2011, during which time Papandreou was forced from office. The so-called Troika, of which the IMF is part, are joint managers of this programme, which was approved by the executive directors of the IMF on 15 March 2012 for XDR 23.8 billion and saw private bondholders take a haircut of upwards of 50%. In the interval between May 2010 and February 2012 the private banks of Holland, France, and Germany reduced exposure to Greek debt from €122 billion to €66 billion.

, 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. No insured deposit of €100k or less were to be affected under the terms of a novel bail-in scheme.

The topic of sovereign debt restructuring was taken up by the IMF in April 2013, for the first time since 2005, in a report entitled "Sovereign Debt Restructuring: Recent Developments and Implications for the Fund's Legal and Policy Framework". The paper, which was discussed by the board on 20 May, summarised the recent experiences in Greece, St Kitts and Nevis, Belize, and Jamaica. An explanatory interview with deputy director Hugh Bredenkamp was published a few days later, as was a deconstruction by Matina Stevis of The Wall Street Journal.

In the October 2013, Fiscal Monitor publication, the IMF suggested that a capital levy capable of reducing Euro-area government debt ratios to "end-2007 levels" would require a very high tax rate of about 10%.

The Fiscal Affairs department of the IMF, headed at the time by Acting Director Sanjeev Gupta, produced a January 2014 report entitled "Fiscal Policy and Income Inequality" that stated that "Some taxes levied on wealth, especially on immovable property, are also an option for economies seeking more progressive taxation ... Property taxes are equitable and efficient, but underutilized in many economies ... There is considerable scope to exploit this tax more fully, both as a revenue source and as a redistributive instrument."

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.

Response and analysis of coronavirus
In late 2019, the IMF estimated global growth in 2020 to reach 3.4%, but due to the coronavirus, in November 2020, it expected the global economy to shrink by 4.4%.

In March 2020, Kristalina Georgieva announced that the IMF stood ready to mobilize $1 trillion as its response to the COVID-19 pandemic. This was in addition to the $50 billion fund it had announced two weeks earlier, of which $5 billion had already been requested by Iran. One day earlier on 11 March, the UK called to pledge £150 million to the IMF catastrophe relief fund. It came to light on 27 March that "more than 80 poor and middle-income countries" had sought a bailout due to the coronavirus.

On 13 April 2020, the IMF said that it "would provide immediate debt relief to 25 member countries under its Catastrophe Containment and Relief Trust (CCRT)" programme.

Member countries

Not all member countries of the IMF are sovereign states, and therefore not all "member countries" of the IMF are members of the United Nations. Amidst "member countries" of the IMF that are not member states of the UN are non-sovereign areas with special jurisdictions that are officially under the sovereignty of full UN member states, such as Aruba, Curaçao, Hong Kong, and Macao, as well as Kosovo. The corporate members appoint ex-officio voting members, who are listed below. All members of the IMF are also International Bank for Reconstruction and Development (IBRD) members and vice versa.

Former members are Cuba (which left in 1964), and Taiwan, which was ejected from the IMF in 1980 after losing the support of the then United States President Jimmy Carter and was replaced by the People's Republic of China. However, "Taiwan Province of China" is still listed in the official IMF indices. Poland withdrew in 1950—allegedly pressured by the Soviet Union—but returned in 1986. The former Czechoslovakia was expelled in 1954 for "failing to provide required data" and was readmitted in 1990, after the Velvet Revolution.

Apart from Cuba, the other UN states that do not belong to the IMF are Liechtenstein, Monaco and North Korea. However, Andorra became the 190th member on 16 October 2020.

Qualifications
Any country may apply to be a part of the IMF. Post-IMF formation, in the early postwar period, rules for IMF membership were left relatively loose. Members needed to make periodic membership payments towards their quota, to refrain from currency restrictions unless granted IMF permission, to abide by the Code of Conduct in the IMF Articles of Agreement, and to provide national economic information. However, stricter rules were imposed on governments that applied to the IMF for funding.

The countries that joined the IMF between 1945 and 1971 agreed to keep their exchange rates secured at rates that could be adjusted only to correct a "fundamental disequilibrium" in the balance of payments, and only with the IMF's agreement.

Benefits
Member countries of the IMF have access to information on the economic policies of all member countries, the opportunity to influence other members' economic policies, technical assistance in banking, fiscal affairs, and exchange matters, financial support in times of payment difficulties, and increased opportunities for trade and investment.

Board of Governors
The board of governors consists of one governor and one alternate governor for each member country. Each member country appoints its two governors. The Board normally meets once a year and is responsible for electing or appointing an executive director to the executive board. While the board of governors is officially responsible for approving quota increases, special drawing right allocations, the admittance of new members, compulsory withdrawal of members, and amendments to the Articles of Agreement and By-Laws, in practice it has delegated most of its powers to the IMF's executive board.

The board of governors is advised by the International Monetary and Financial Committee and the Development Committee. The International Monetary and Financial Committee has 24 members and monitors developments in global liquidity and the transfer of resources to developing countries. The Development Committee has 25 members and advises on critical development issues and on financial resources required to promote economic development in developing countries.

The board of governors reports directly to the managing director of the IMF, Kristalina Georgieva.

Executive Board
24 Executive Directors make up the executive board. The executive directors represent all 190 member countries in a geographically based roster. Countries with large economies have their own executive director, but most countries are grouped in constituencies representing four or more countries.

Following the 2008 Amendment on Voice and Participation which came into effect in March 2011, seven countries each appoint an executive director: the United States, Japan, China, Germany, France, the United Kingdom, and Saudi Arabia. The remaining 17 Directors represent constituencies consisting of 2 to 23 countries. This Board usually meets several times each week. The board membership and constituency is scheduled for periodic review every eight years.

Managing Director
The IMF is led by a managing director, who is head of the staff and serves as chairman of the executive board. The managing director is the most powerful position at the IMF. Historically, the IMF's managing director has been a European citizen and the president of the World Bank has been an American citizen. However, this standard is increasingly being questioned and competition for these two posts may soon open up to include other qualified candidates from any part of the world. In August 2019, the International Monetary Fund has removed the age limit which is 65 or over for its managing director position.

In 2011, the world's largest developing countries, the BRIC states, issued a statement declaring that the tradition of appointing a European as managing director undermined the legitimacy of the IMF and called for the appointment to be merit-based.

List of Managing Directors

Former managing director Dominique Strauss-Kahn was arrested in connection with charges of sexually assaulting a New York hotel room attendant and resigned on 18 May. The charges were later dropped. On 28 June 2011 Christine Lagarde was confirmed as managing director of the IMF for a five-year term starting on 5 July 2011. She was re-elected by consensus for a second five-year term, starting 5 July 2016, being the only candidate nominated for the post of managing director.

First Deputy Managing Director
The managing director is assisted by a First Deputy managing director (FDMD) who, by convention, has always been a citizen of the United States. Together, the managing director and their First Deputy lead the senior management of the IMF. Like the managing director, the First Deputy traditionally serves a five-year term.

Chief Economist
The chief economist leads the research division of the IMF and is a "senior official" of the IMF.

IMF staff
IMF staff have considerable autonomy and are known to shape IMF policy. According to Jeffrey Chwieroth, "It is the staff members who conduct the bulk of the IMF's tasks; they formulate policy proposals for consideration by member states, exercise surveillance, carry out loan negotiations and design the programs, and collect and systematize detailed information." Most IMF staff are economists. According to a 1968 study, nearly 60% of staff were from English-speaking developed countries. By 2004, between 40 and 50% of staff were from English-speaking developed countries.

A 1996 study found that 90% of new staff with a PhD obtained them from universities in the United States or Canada. A 1999 study found that none of the new staff with a PhD obtained their PhD in the Global South.

Voting power
Voting power in the IMF is based on a quota system. Each member has a number of basic votes, equal to 5.502% of the total votes, plus one additional vote for each special drawing right (SDR) of 100,000 of a member country's quota. The SDR is the unit of account of the IMF and represents a potential claim to currency. It is based on a basket of key international currencies. The basic votes generate a slight bias in favour of small countries, but the additional votes determined by SDR outweigh this bias. Changes in the voting shares require approval by a super-majority of 85% of voting power.

In December 2015, the United States Congress adopted a legislation authorising the 2010 Quota and Governance Reforms. As a result,
 * all 190 members' quotas will increase from a total of about XDR 238.5 billion to about XDR 477 billion, while the quota shares and voting power of the IMF's poorest member countries will be protected.
 * more than 6 percent of quota shares will shift to dynamic emerging market and developing countries and also from over-represented to under-represented members.
 * four emerging market countries (Brazil, China, India, and Russia) will be among the ten largest members of the IMF. Other top 10 members are the United States, Japan, Germany, France, the United Kingdom and Italy.

Effects of the quota system
The IMF's quota system was created to raise funds for loans. Each IMF member country is assigned a quota, or contribution, that reflects the country's relative size in the global economy. Each member's quota also determines its relative voting power. Thus, financial contributions from member governments are linked to voting power in the organization.

This system follows the logic of a shareholder-controlled organization: wealthy countries have more say in the making and revision of rules. Since decision making at the IMF reflects each member's relative economic position in the world, wealthier countries that provide more money to the IMF have more influence than poorer members that contribute less; nonetheless, the IMF focuses on redistribution.

Inflexibility of voting power
Quotas are normally reviewed every five years and can be increased when deemed necessary by the board of governors. IMF voting shares are relatively inflexible: countries that grow economically have tended to become under-represented as their voting power lags behind. Currently, reforming the representation of developing countries within the IMF has been suggested. These countries' economies represent a large portion of the global economic system but this is not reflected in the IMF's decision-making process through the nature of the quota system. Joseph Stiglitz argues, "There is a need to provide more effective voice and representation for developing countries, which now represent a much larger portion of world economic activity since 1944, when the IMF was created." In 2008, a number of quota reforms were passed including shifting 6% of quota shares to dynamic emerging markets and developing countries.

Overcoming borrower/creditor divide
The IMF's membership is divided along income lines: certain countries provide financial resources while others use these resources. Both developed country "creditors" and developing country "borrowers" are members of the IMF. The developed countries provide the financial resources but rarely enter into IMF loan agreements; they are the creditors. Conversely, the developing countries use the lending services but contribute little to the pool of money available to lend because their quotas are smaller; they are the borrowers. Thus, tension is created around governance issues because these two groups, creditors and borrowers, have fundamentally different interests.

The criticism is that the system of voting power distribution through a quota system institutionalizes borrower subordination and creditor dominance. The resulting division of the IMF's membership into borrowers and non-borrowers has increased the controversy around conditionality because the borrowers are interested in increasing loan access while creditors want to maintain reassurance that the loans will be repaid.

Use
In 2008, the SAIS Review of International Affairs revealed that the average overall use of IMF credit per decade increased, in real terms, by 21% between the 1970s and 1980s, and increased again by just over 22% from the 1980s to the 1991–2005 period. Another study has suggested that since 1950 the continent of Africa alone has received $300 billion from the IMF, the World Bank, and affiliate institutions.

A study by Bumba Mukherjee found that developing democratic countries benefit more from IMF programs than developing autocratic countries because policy-making, and the process of deciding where loaned money is used, is more transparent within a democracy. One study done by Randall Stone found that although earlier studies found little impact of IMF programs on balance of payments, more recent studies using more sophisticated methods and larger samples "usually found IMF programs improved the balance of payments".

Exceptional Access Framework – sovereign debt
The Exceptional Access Framework was created in 2003 when John B. Taylor was Under Secretary of the US Treasury for International Affairs. The new Framework became fully operational in February 2003 and it was applied in the subsequent decisions on Argentina and Brazil. Its purpose was to place some sensible rules and limits on the way the IMF makes loans to support governments with debt problem—especially in emerging markets—and thereby move away from the bailout mentality of the 1990s. Such a reform was essential for ending the crisis atmosphere that then existed in emerging markets. The reform was closely related to and put in place nearly simultaneously with the actions of several emerging market countries to place collective action clauses in their bond contracts.

In 2010, the framework was abandoned so the IMF could make loans to Greece in an unsustainable and political situation.

The topic of sovereign debt restructuring was taken up by IMF staff in April 2013 for the first time since 2005, in a report entitled "Sovereign Debt Restructuring: Recent Developments and Implications for the Fund's Legal and Policy Framework". The paper, which was discussed by the board on 20 May, summarised the recent experiences in Greece, St Kitts and Nevis, Belize, and Jamaica. An explanatory interview with deputy director Hugh Bredenkamp was published a few days later, as was a deconstruction by Matina Stevis of The Wall Street Journal.

The staff was directed to formulate an updated policy, which was accomplished on 22 May 2014 with a report entitled "The Fund's Lending Framework and Sovereign Debt: Preliminary Considerations", and taken up by the executive board on 13 June. The staff proposed that "in circumstances where a (Sovereign) member has lost market access and debt is considered sustainable ... the IMF would be able to provide Exceptional Access on the basis of a debt operation that involves an extension of maturities", which was labeled a "reprofiling operation". These reprofiling operations would "generally be less costly to the debtor and creditors—and thus to the system overall—relative to either an upfront debt reduction operation or a bail-out that is followed by debt reduction ... (and) would be envisaged only when both (a) a member has lost market access and (b) debt is assessed to be sustainable, but not with high probability ... Creditors will only agree if they understand that such an amendment is necessary to avoid a worse outcome: namely, a default and/or an operation involving debt reduction ... Collective action clauses, which now exist in most—but not all—bonds would be relied upon to address collective action problems."

Impact
According to a 2002 study by Randall W. Stone, the academic literature on the IMF shows "no consensus on the long-term effects of IMF programs on growth".

Some research has found that IMF loans can reduce the chance of a future banking crisis, while other studies have found that they can increase the risk of political crises. IMF programs can reduce the effects of a currency crisis.

Some research has found that IMF programs are less effective in countries which possess a developed-country patron (be it by foreign aid, membership of postcolonial institutions or UN voting patterns), seemingly due to this patron allowing countries to flaunt IMF program rules as these rules are not consistently enforced. Some research has found that IMF loans reduce economic growth due to creating an economic moral hazard, reducing public investment, reducing incentives to create a robust domestic policies and reducing private investor confidence. Other research has indicated that IMF loans can have a positive impact on economic growth and that their effects are highly nuanced.

Criticisms
Overseas Development Institute (ODI) research undertaken in 1980 included criticisms of the IMF which support the analysis that it is a pillar of what activist Titus Alexander calls global apartheid.
 * Developed countries were seen to have a more dominant role and control over less developed countries (LDCs).
 * The Fund worked on the incorrect assumption that all payments disequilibria were caused domestically. The Group of 24 (G-24), on behalf of LDC members, and the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD) complained that the IMF did not distinguish sufficiently between disequilibria with predominantly external as opposed to internal causes. This criticism was voiced in the aftermath of the 1973 oil crisis. Then LDCs found themselves with payment deficits due to adverse changes in their terms of trade, with the Fund prescribing stabilization programmes similar to those suggested for deficits caused by government over-spending. Faced with long-term, externally generated disequilibria, the G-24 argued for more time for LDCs to adjust their economies.
 * Some IMF policies may be anti-developmental; the report said that deflationary effects of IMF programmes quickly led to losses of output and employment in economies where incomes were low and unemployment was high. Moreover, the burden of the deflation is disproportionately borne by the poor.
 * The IMF's initial policies were based in theory and influenced by differing opinions and departmental rivalries. Critics suggest that its intentions to implement these policies in countries with widely varying economic circumstances were misinformed and lacked economic rationale.

ODI conclusions were that the IMF's very nature of promoting market-oriented approaches attracted unavoidable criticism. On the other hand, the IMF could serve as a scapegoat while allowing governments to blame international bankers. The ODI conceded that the IMF was insensitive to political aspirations of LDCs while its policy conditions were inflexible.

Argentina, which had been considered by the IMF to be a model country in its compliance to policy proposals by the Bretton Woods institutions, experienced a catastrophic economic crisis in 2001, which some believe to have been caused by IMF-induced budget restrictions—which undercut the government's ability to sustain national infrastructure even in crucial areas such as health, education, and security—and privatisation of strategically vital national resources. Others attribute the crisis to Argentina's misdesigned fiscal federalism, which caused subnational spending to increase rapidly. The crisis added to widespread hatred of this institution in Argentina and other South American countries, with many blaming the IMF for the region's economic problems. The current—as of early 2006—trend toward moderate left-wing governments in the region and a growing concern with the development of a regional economic policy largely independent of big business pressures has been ascribed to this crisis.

In 2006, a senior ActionAid policy analyst Akanksha Marphatia stated that IMF policies in Africa undermine any possibility of meeting the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) due to imposed restrictions that prevent spending on important sectors, such as education and health.

In an interview (2008-05-19), the former Romanian Prime Minister Călin Popescu-Tăriceanu claimed that "Since 2005, IMF is constantly making mistakes when it appreciates the country's economic performances". Former Tanzanian President Julius Nyerere, who claimed that debt-ridden African states were ceding sovereignty to the IMF and the World Bank, famously asked, "Who elected the IMF to be the ministry of finance for every country in the world?"

Former chief economist of IMF and former Reserve Bank of India (RBI) Governor Raghuram Rajan who predicted the financial crisis of 2007–08 criticised the IMF for remaining a sideline player to the developed world. He criticised the IMF for praising the monetary policies of the US, which he believed were wreaking havoc in emerging markets. He had been critical of "ultra-loose money policies" of some unnamed countries.

Countries such as Zambia have not received proper aid with long-lasting effects, leading to concern from economists. Since 2005, Zambia (as well as 29 other African countries) did receive debt write-offs, which helped with the country's medical and education funds. However, Zambia returned to a debt of over half its GDP in less than a decade. American economist William Easterly, sceptical of the IMF's methods, had initially warned that "debt relief would simply encourage more reckless borrowing by crooked governments unless it was accompanied by reforms to speed up economic growth and improve governance", according to The Economist.

Conditionality
The IMF has been criticised for being "out of touch" with local economic conditions, cultures, and environments in the countries they are requiring policy reform. The economic advice the IMF gives might not always take into consideration the difference between what spending means on paper and how it is felt by citizens. Countries charge that with excessive conditionality, they do not "own" the programmes and the links are broken between a recipient country's people, its government, and the goals being pursued by the IMF.

Jeffrey Sachs argues that the IMF's "usual prescription is 'budgetary belt tightening to countries who are much too poor to own belts. Sachs wrote that the IMF's role as a generalist institution specialising in macroeconomic issues needs reform. Conditionality has also been criticised because a country can pledge collateral of "acceptable assets" to obtain waivers—if one assumes that all countries are able to provide "acceptable collateral".

One view is that conditionality undermines domestic political institutions. The recipient governments are sacrificing policy autonomy in exchange for funds, which can lead to public resentment of the local leadership for accepting and enforcing the IMF conditions. Political instability can result from more leadership turnover as political leaders are replaced in electoral backlashes. IMF conditions are often criticised for reducing government services, thus increasing unemployment.

Another criticism is that IMF policies are only designed to address poor governance, excessive government spending, excessive government intervention in markets, and too much state ownership. This assumes that this narrow range of issues represents the only possible problems; everything is standardised and differing contexts are ignored. A country may also be compelled to accept conditions it would not normally accept had they not been in a financial crisis in need of assistance.

On top of that, regardless of what methodologies and data sets used, it comes to same the conclusion of exacerbating income inequality. With Gini coefficient, it became clear that countries with IMF policies face increased income inequality.

It is claimed that conditionalities hinder social stability and hence inhibit the stated goals of the IMF, while Structural Adjustment Programmes lead to an increase in poverty in recipient countries. The IMF sometimes advocates "austerity programmes", cutting public spending and increasing taxes even when the economy is weak, to bring budgets closer to a balance, thus reducing budget deficits. Countries are often advised to lower their corporate tax rate. In Globalization and Its Discontents, Joseph E. Stiglitz, former chief economist and senior vice-president at the World Bank, criticises these policies. He argues that by converting to a more monetarist approach, the purpose of the fund is no longer valid, as it was designed to provide funds for countries to carry out Keynesian reflations, and that the IMF "was not participating in a conspiracy, but it was reflecting the interests and ideology of the Western financial community."

Stiglitz concludes, "Modern high-tech warfare is designed to remove physical contact: dropping bombs from 50,000 feet ensures that one does not 'feel' what one does. Modern economic management is similar: from one's luxury hotel, one can callously impose policies about which one would think twice if one knew the people whose lives one was destroying."

The researchers Eric Toussaint and Damien Millet argue that the IMF's policies amount to a new form of colonisation that does not need a military presence: "Following the exigencies of the governments of the richest companies, the IMF, permitted countries in crisis to borrow in order to avoid default on their repayments. Caught in the debt's downward spiral, developing countries soon had no other recourse than to take on new debt in order to repay the old debt. Before providing them with new loans, at higher interest rates, future leaders asked the IMF, to intervene with the guarantee of ulterior reimbursement, asking for a signed agreement with the said countries. The IMF thus agreed to restart the flow of the 'finance pump' on condition that the concerned countries first use this money to reimburse banks and other private lenders, while restructuring their economy at the IMF's discretion: these were the famous conditionalities, detailed in the Structural Adjustment Programmes. The IMF and its ultra-liberal experts took control of the borrowing countries' economic policies. A new form of colonisation was thus instituted. It was not even necessary to establish an administrative or military presence; the debt alone maintained this new form of submission."

International politics play an important role in IMF decision making. The clout of member states is roughly proportional to its contribution to IMF finances. The United States has the greatest number of votes and therefore wields the most influence. Domestic politics often come into play, with politicians in developing countries using conditionality to gain leverage over the opposition to influence policy.

Academic Jeremy Garlick cites IMF loans to South Korea during the 1997 Asian financial crisis as widely perceived by the South Korean public as a debt-trap. Garlick writes that the public was generally bitter about submitting to the conditions imposed by the IMF, which required South Korea to radically restructure its economy and consult with the IMF before making economic decisions until the debt was repaid.

In 2016, the IMF's research department published a report titled "Neoliberalism: Oversold?" which, while praising some aspects of the "neoliberal agenda", claims that the organisation has been "overselling" fiscal austerity policies and financial deregulation, which they claim has exacerbated both financial crises and economic inequality around the world.

In 2020 and 2021, Oxfam criticized the IMF for forcing tough austerity measures on many low income countries during the COVID-19 pandemic, despite forcing cuts to healthcare spending, would hamper the recipient's response to the pandemic.

Support of dictatorships
The role of the Bretton Woods institutions has been controversial since the late Cold War, because of claims that the IMF policy makers supported military dictatorships friendly to American and European corporations, but also other anti-communist and Communist regimes (such as Mobutu's Zaire and Ceaușescu's Romania, respectively). Critics also claim that the IMF is generally apathetic or hostile to human rights, and labour rights. The controversy has helped spark the anti-globalization movement.

An example of IMF's support for a dictatorship was its ongoing support for Mobutu's rule in Zaire, although its own envoy, Erwin Blumenthal, provided a sobering report about the entrenched corruption and embezzlement and the inability of the country to pay back any loans.

Arguments in favour of the IMF say that economic stability is a precursor to democracy; however, critics highlight various examples in which democratised countries fell after receiving IMF loans.

A 2017 study found no evidence of IMF lending programs undermining democracy in borrowing countries. To the contrary, it found "evidence for modest but definitively positive conditional differences in the democracy scores of participating and non-participating countries".

On 28 June 2021, the IMF approved a US$1 billion loan to the Ugandan government despite protests from Ugandans in Washington, London and South Africa.

Impact on access to food
A number of civil society organisations have criticised the IMF's policies for their impact on access to food, particularly in developing countries. In October 2008, former United States president Bill Clinton delivered a speech to the United Nations on World Food Day, criticising the World Bank and IMF for their policies on food and agriculture:

"We need the World Bank, the IMF, all the big foundations, and all the governments to admit that, for 30 years, we all blew it, including me when I was president. We were wrong to believe that food was like some other product in international trade, and we all have to go back to a more responsible and sustainable form of agriculture."

The FPIF remarked that there is a recurring pattern: "the destabilization of peasant producers by a one-two punch of IMF-World Bank structural adjustment programs that gutted government investment in the countryside followed by the massive influx of subsidized U.S. and European Union agricultural imports after the WTO's Agreement on Agriculture pried open markets."

Impact on public health
A 2009 study concluded that the strict conditions resulted in thousands of deaths in Eastern Europe by tuberculosis as public health care had to be weakened. In the 21 countries to which the IMF had given loans, tuberculosis deaths rose by 16.6%. A 2017 systematic review on studies conducted on the impact that Structural adjustment programs have on child and maternal health found that these programs have a detrimental effect on maternal and child health among other adverse effects.

Function and policies
The IMF is only one of many international organisations, and it is a generalist institution that deals only with macroeconomic issues; its core areas of concern in developing countries are very narrow. One proposed reform is a movement towards close partnership with other specialist agencies such as UNICEF, the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO), and the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP).

Jeffrey Sachs argues in The End of Poverty that the IMF and the World Bank have "the brightest economists and the lead in advising poor countries on how to break out of poverty, but the problem is development economics". Development economics needs the reform, not the IMF. He also notes that IMF loan conditions should be paired with other reforms—e.g., trade reform in developed nations, debt cancellation, and increased financial assistance for investments in basic infrastructure. IMF loan conditions cannot stand alone and produce change; they need to be partnered with other reforms or other conditions as applicable.

U.S. influence and voting reform
The scholarly consensus is that IMF decision-making is not simply technocratic, but also guided by political and economic concerns. The United States is the IMF's most powerful member, and its influence reaches even into decision-making concerning individual loan agreements. The U.S. has historically been openly opposed to losing what Treasury Secretary Jacob Lew described in 2015 as its "leadership role" at the IMF, and the U.S.' "ability to shape international norms and practices".

Emerging markets were not well-represented for most of the IMF's history: Despite being the most populous country, China's vote share was the sixth largest; Brazil's vote share was smaller than Belgium's. Reforms to give more powers to emerging economies were agreed by the G20 in 2010. The reforms could not pass, however, until they were ratified by the United States Congress,  since 85% of the Fund's voting power was required for the reforms to take effect, and the Americans held more than 16% of voting power at the time. After repeated criticism, the U.S. finally ratified the voting reforms at the end of 2015. The OECD countries maintained their overwhelming majority of voting share, and the U.S. in particular retained its share at over 16%.

The criticism of the American- and European-dominated IMF has led to what some consider "disenfranchising the world" from the governance of the IMF. Raúl Prebisch, the founding secretary-general of the UN Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD), wrote that one of "the conspicuous deficiencies of the general economic theory, from the point of view of the periphery, is its false sense of universality".

IMF and globalization
Globalization encompasses three institutions: global financial markets and transnational companies, national governments linked to each other in economic and military alliances led by the United States, and rising "global governments" such as World Trade Organization (WTO), IMF, and World Bank. Charles Derber argues in his book People Before Profit, "These interacting institutions create a new global power system where sovereignty is globalized, taking power and constitutional authority away from nations and giving it to global markets and international bodies". Titus Alexander argues that this system institutionalises global inequality between western countries and the Majority World in a form of global apartheid, in which the IMF is a key pillar.

The establishment of globalised economic institutions has been both a symptom of and a stimulus for globalisation. The development of the World Bank, the IMF, regional development banks such as the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development (EBRD), and multilateral trade institutions such as the WTO signals a move away from the dominance of the state as the primary actor analysed in international affairs. Globalization has thus been transformative in terms of limiting of state sovereignty over the economy.

International central bank digital currency
In April 2023, the IMF launched their international central bank digital currency through their Digital Currency Monetary Authority, it will be called the Universal Monetary Unit, or Units for shorthand. The ANSI character will be Ü and will be used to facilitate international banking and international trade between countries and currencies. It will help facilitate SWIFT transactions on cross border transactions at wholesale FX rates instantaneously with real-time settlements. In June, it announced it was working on a platform for central bank digital currencies (CBDCs) that would enable transctions between nations. IMF Managing Director Kristalina Georgieva said that if central banks did not agree on a common platform, cryptocurrencies would fill the resulting vacuum.

Scandals
Managing Director Lagarde (2011–2019) was convicted of giving preferential treatment to businessman-turned-politician Bernard Tapie as he pursued a legal challenge against the French government. At the time, Lagarde was the French economic minister. Within hours of her conviction, in which she escaped any punishment, the fund's 24-member executive board put to rest any speculation that she might have to resign, praising her "outstanding leadership" and the "wide respect" she commands around the world.

Former IMF Managing Director Rodrigo Rato was arrested in 2015 for alleged fraud, embezzlement and money laundering. In 2017, the Audiencia Nacional found Rato guilty of embezzlement and sentenced him to $4 1/2$ years' imprisonment. In 2018, the sentence was confirmed by the Supreme Court of Spain.

Alternatives
In March 2011, the Ministers of Economy and Finance of the African Union proposed to establish an African Monetary Fund.

At the 6th BRICS summit in July 2014 the BRICS nations (Brazil, Russia, India, China, and South Africa) announced the BRICS Contingent Reserve Arrangement (CRA) with an initial size of US$100 billion, a framework to provide liquidity through currency swaps in response to actual or potential short-term balance-of-payments pressures.

In 2014, the China-led Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank was established.

In the media
Life and Debt, a documentary film, deals with the IMF's policies' influence on Jamaica and its economy from a critical point of view. Debtocracy, a 2011 independent Greek documentary film, also criticises the IMF. Portuguese musician José Mário Branco's 1982 album FMI (album) is inspired by the IMF's intervention in Portugal through monitored stabilisation programs in 1977–78. In the 2015 film Our Brand Is Crisis, the IMF is mentioned as a point of political contention, where the Bolivian population fears its electoral interference.

title: International Monetary Fund


text:
Islands of the Clyde

The Islands of the Firth of Clyde are the fifth largest of the major Scottish island groups after the Inner and Outer Hebrides, Orkney and Shetland. They are situated in the Firth of Clyde between Argyll and Bute in the west and Inverclyde, North Ayrshire and South Ayrshire in the east. There are about forty islands and skerries. Only four are inhabited, and only nine are larger than 40 ha. The largest and most populous are Arran and Bute. They are served by dedicated ferry routes, as are Great Cumbrae and Holy Island. Unlike the isles in the four larger Scottish archipelagos, none of the isles in this group are connected to one another or to the mainland by bridges.

The geology and geomorphology of the area is complex, and the islands and the surrounding sea lochs each have distinctive features. The influence of the Atlantic Ocean and the North Atlantic Drift create a mild, damp oceanic climate. There is a diversity of wildlife, including three species of rare endemic trees.

The larger islands have been continuously inhabited since Neolithic times. The cultures of their inhabitants were influenced by the emergence of the kingdom of Dál Riata, beginning in 500 AD. The islands were then politically absorbed into the emerging kingdom of Alba, led by Kenneth MacAlpin. During the early Middle Ages, the islands experienced Viking incursions. In the 13th century, they became part of the Kingdom of Scotland.

Geology and geography

The Highland Boundary Fault runs past Bute and through the northern part of Arran. Therefore, from a geological perspective, some of the islands are in the Highlands and some in the Central Lowlands. As a result of Arran's geological similarity to Scotland, it is sometimes referred to as "Scotland in miniature" and the island is a popular destination for geologists. They come to Arran to study its intrusive igneous landforms, such as sills and dykes, as well as its sedimentary and metasedimentary rocks, which range widely in age. Visiting in 1787, the geologist James Hutton found his first example of an unconformity there. The spot where he discovered it is one of the most famous places in the history of the study of geology. The group of weakly metamorphosed rocks that form the Highland Border Complex lie discontinuously along the Highland Boundary Fault. One of the most prominent exposures is along Loch Fad on Bute. Ailsa Craig, which lies some 25 km south of Arran, has been quarried for a rare type of micro-granite containing riebeckite, known as "Ailsite". It is used by Kays of Scotland to make curling stones. (As of 2004, 60 to 70% of all curling stones in use globally were made from granite quarried on the island.)

Like the rest of Scotland, the Firth of Clyde was covered by ice sheets during the Pleistocene ice ages, and the landscape has been much affected by glaciation. Back then, Arran's highest peaks may have been nunataks. Sea-level changes and the isostatic rise of land after the last retreat of the ice created clifflines behind raised beaches, which are a prominent feature of the entire coastline. The action of these forces has made charting the post glacial coastlines a complex task.

The various soil types on the islands reflect their diverse geology. Bute has the most productive land, and it has a pattern of deposits that is typical of the southwest of Scotland. In the eroded valleys, there is a mixture of boulder clay and other glacial deposits. Elsewhere, especially to the south and west, there are raised beach- and marine deposits, which in some places, such as Stravanan, result in a machair landscape inland from the sandy bays.

The Firth of Clyde, in which these islands lie, is north of the Irish Sea and has numerous branching inlets. Some of those inlets, including Loch Goil, Loch Long, Gare Loch, Loch Fyne, and the estuary of the River Clyde, have their own substantial features. In places, the effect of glaciation on the seabed is pronounced. For example, the Firth is 320 m deep between Arran and Bute, even though they are only 8 km apart. The islands all stand exposed to wind and tide. Various lighthouses, such as those on Ailsa Craig, Pladda, and Davaar, act as an aid to navigation.

Climate

The Firth of Clyde lies between 55 and 56 degrees north latitude. This is the same latitude as Labrador in Canada and north of the Aleutian Islands. However, the influence of the North Atlantic Drift—the northern extension of the Gulf Stream—moderates the winter weather. As a result, the area enjoys a mild, damp oceanic climate. Temperatures are generally cool, averaging about 6 °C in January and 14 °C in July at sea level. Snow seldom lies at sea level, and frosts are generally less frequent than they are on the mainland. In common with most islands off the west coast of Scotland, the average annual rainfall is generally high: between 1300 mm on Bute, in the Cumbraes, and in the south of Arran, and 1900 mm in the north of Arran. The Arran mountains are even wetter: Their summits receive over 2550 mm of rain annually. May, June and July are the sunniest months: on average, there is a total of 200 hours of bright sunshine during that 3-month period each year. Southern Bute benefits from a particularly large number of sunny days.

Prehistory

Mesolithic humans arrived in the area of the Firth of Clyde during the 4th millennium BC, probably from Ireland. This initial arrival was followed by another wave of Neolithic peoples using the same route. In fact, there is some evidence that the Firth of Clyde was a significant route through which mainland Scotland was colonised during the Neolithic period. The inhabitants of Argyll, the Clyde estuary, and elsewhere in western Scotland at that time developed a distinctive style of megalithic structure that is known today as the Clyde cairns. About 100 of these structures have been found. They were used for interment of the dead. They are rectangular or trapezoidal, with a small enclosing chamber into which the person's body was placed. They are faced with large slabs of stone set on end (sometimes subdivided into smaller compartments). They also feature a forecourt area, which may have been used for displays or rituals associated with interment. They are mostly found in Arran, Bute, and Kintyre. It is thought likely that the Clyde cairns were the earliest forms of Neolithic monument constructed by incoming settlers. However, only a few of the cairns have been radiocarbon dated. A cairn at Monamore on Arran has been dated to 3160 BC, although other evidence suggests that it was almost certainly built earlier than that, possibly around 4000 BC. The area also features numerous standing stones dating from prehistoric times, including six stone circles on Machrie Moor in Arran, and other examples on Great Cumbrae and Bute.

Later, Bronze Age settlers also constructed megaliths at various sites. Many of them date from the 2nd millennium BC. However, instead of chambered cairns, these peoples constructed burial cists, which can be found, for example, on Inchmarnock. Evidence of settlement during this period, especially the early part of it, is scant. However, one notable artifact has been found on Bute that dates from around 2000 BC. Known today as the “Queen of the Inch necklace,” it is an article of jewellery made of lignite (commonly called “jet”).

During the early Iron Age, the Brythonic culture held sway. There is no evidence that the Roman occupation of southern Scotland extended into these islands.

Early Scots rule

Beginning in the 2nd century AD, Irish influence was at work in the region, and by the 6th century, Gaels had established the kingdom of Dál Riata there. Unlike earlier inhabitants, such as the P-Celtic speaking Brythons, these Gaels spoke a form of Gaelic (a modern version of which is still spoken today in the Hebrides). During this period, through the efforts of Saint Ninian and others, Christianity slowly supplanted Druidism. The kingdom of Dál Riata flourished from the rule of Fergus Mór in the late 5th century until the Viking incursions beginning in the late 8th century. Islands close to the shores of modern Ayrshire presumably remained part of the Kingdom of Strathclyde during this period, whilst the main islands became part of the emerging Kingdom of Alba founded by Kenneth MacAlpin (Cináed mac Ailpín).

Viking influence

Beginning in the 9th century and into the 13th century, the Islands of the Clyde constituted a border zone between the Norse Suðreyjar and Scotland, and many of them were under Norse hegemony.

Beginning in the last half of the 12th century, and then into the early 1200s, the islands may well have served as the power base of Somhairle mac Giolla Brighde and his descendants. During this time, the islands seem to have come under the sway of the Steward of Scotland’s authority and to have been taken over by the expanding Stewart lordship.

This western extension of Scottish authority appears to have been one of the factors motivating the Norwegian invasion of the region in 1230, during which the invaders seized Rothesay Castle.

In 1263, Norwegian troops commanded by Haakon Haakonarson repeated the feat, but the ensuing Battle of Largs between Scots and Norwegian forces, which took place on the shores of the Firth of Clyde, was inconclusive as a military contest.

This battle marked an ultimately fatal weakening of Norwegian power in Scotland. Haakon retreated to Orkney, where he died in December 1263, consoled on his death bed by recitations of the old sagas. Following his death, under the 1266 Treaty of Perth, all rights that the Norwegian Crown "had of old therein" in relation to the islands were yielded to the Kingdom of Scotland.

Modern Scotland

Politically, from the conclusion of the Treaty of Perth in 1266 to the present day, all of the islands of the Clyde have been part of Scotland.

Ecclesiastically, beginning in the early medieval period all of these isles were part of the Diocese of Sodor and Man, based at Peel, on the Isle of Man. After 1387, the seat of the Bishopric of the Isles was relocated to the north, first to Snizort on Skye and then to Iona. This arrangement continued until the Scottish Reformation in the 16th century, when Scotland broke with the Catholic Church.

The mid-1700s marked the beginning of a century of significant change. New forms of transport, industry, and agriculture brought an end to ways of life that had endured for centuries. The Battle of Culloden in 1746 foreshadowed the end of the clan system. These changes improved living standards for some, but came at a cost for others.

In the late 18th and early 19th centuries, Alexander, the 10th Duke of Hamilton (1767–1852), and others implemented a controversial agricultural-reform programme called the Highland Clearances that had a devastating effect on many of Arran's inhabitants. Whole villages were emptied, and the Gaelic culture of the island was dealt a terminal blow. (A memorial to the tenant farmers evicted from the island by this programme was later erected on the shore at Lamlash, funded by a Canadian descendant of some of those evicted.)

From the 1850s to the late 20th century, cargo ships known as “Clyde Puffers” (made famous by an early-20th-century story collection called the Vital Spark), were the workhorses of the islands, carrying a great deal of produce and a great variety of products to and from the islands. In May 1889, the Caledonian Steam Packet Company (CSP) was founded and began operating steamer services to and from Gourock for the Caledonian Railway. The company soon expanded by taking over rival steamer operators. David MacBrayne operated the Glasgow-to-Ardrishaig steamer service, as part of the so-called "Royal Route" to Oban. During the 20th century, many of the islands were developed as tourist resorts along the lines of mainland resorts such as Largs and Troon, but catering for Glaswegians who preferred to holiday "Doon the Watter". In 1973, CSP and MacBraynes combined their Clyde and West Highland operations under the new name of Caledonian MacBrayne. A government-owned corporation, they serve Great Cumbrae, Arran, and Bute, and also run mainland-to-mainland ferries across the firth. Private companies operate services from Arran to Holy Isle, and from McInroy's Point (Gourock) to Hunter's Quay on the Cowal peninsula.

Politically, from 1890 to 1975, most of the islands comprised the traditional County of Bute, and its inhabitants were represented by the county council. Since the 1975 reorganization, however, the islands have been split more or less equally between two modern council authorities: Argyll and Bute, and North Ayrshire. Only Ailsa Craig and Lady Isle in South Ayrshire are not part of either of these two council areas.

Islands
Below is a table listing the nine islands of the Firth of Clyde that have an area greater than 40 hectares (approximately 100 acres), showing their population and listing the smaller uninhabited islets adjacent to them (including tidal islets separated only when the tide is higher, and skerries exposed only when the tide is lower).

As of 2001, six of the islands were inhabited, but that included one with only two residents (Davaar), and one with only one resident (Sanda). At the 2011 census, there was no one usually resident on either of these islands.

Outlying islands

The islets that lie remote from the larger islands are described separately below.

There are two islets in Gare Loch: Green Island and Perch Rock. Gare Loch is small, but it hosts the Faslane Naval Base, where the UK's Trident nuclear submarines are located. At its southern end, the loch opens into the Firth of Clyde via the Rhu narrows.

There are also several islets in the Kilbrannan Sound, which lies between Arran and the Kintyre peninsula. They are: An Struthlag, Cour Island, Eilean Carrach (Carradale), Eilean Carrach (Skipness), Eilean Grianain, Eilean Sunadale, Gull Isle, Island Ross and Thorn Isle.

(The Norse sagas tell a story about the Kintyre peninsula. In the late 11th century, a king of Norway (Magnus Barefoot) devised a plan to increase his territorial possessions. He persuaded a king of Scotland (Malcolm III or Edgar) to agree that he could take possession of an area of land on the west coast of Scotland if a ship could sail around it. Magnus then arranged for one of his longships to be dragged across the 1.5 km-long isthmus at the northern tip of the Kintyre peninsula, which connects Kintyre to the mainland. (The isthmus lies between East Loch Tarbert and West Loch Tarbert). He took command of the ship's tiller himself. Then, declaring that Kintyre had "better land than the best of the Hebrides", he claimed that dragging his ship across the isthmus had been equivalent to “sailing around” the peninsula, and thus that the peninsula counted as “land around which a ship could sail.” As a result of this maneuver, he was able to claim possession of the peninsula, which remained under Norse rule for more than a dozen years. )

There are also several islets and skerries in Loch Fyne, which extends 65 km inland from the Sound of Bute, and is the longest of Scotland's sea lochs. They are: Duncuan Island, Eilean Ardgaddan, Eilean a' Bhuic, Eilean Aoghainn, Eilean a' Chomhraig, Eilean an Dúnain, Eilean Buidhe (Ardmarnock), Eilean Buidhe (Portavadie), Eilean Fraoch, Eilean Math-ghamhna, Eilean Mór, Glas Eilean, Heather Island, Inverneil Island, Kilbride Island, and Liath Eilean.

There are several islets surrounding Horse Isle in North Ayrshire: Broad Rock, East Islet, Halftide Rock, High Rock and North Islet.

Lady Isle lies off the South Ayrshire coast near Troon. At one time it housed "ane old chapell with an excellent spring of water". However, in June 1821, someone set fire to the "turf and pasture". Once the pasture had burned away, gales blew much of the island's soil into the sea. This permanently destroyed the island's ability to support grazing.

There are no islands in Loch Goil or Loch Long, which are fjord-like arms in the northern part of the firth.

Non-island areas with “island” in their name
Here is a list of places along that shores of the Firth of Clyde that are not islands, but have names that misleadingly suggest they are islands (eilean being Gaelic for "island"): Eilean na Beithe, Portavadie; Eilean Beag, Cove; Eilean Dubh, Dalchenna, Loch Fyne; Eilean nan Gabhar, Melldalloch, Kyles of Bute; Barmore Island, just north of Tarbert, Kintyre; Eilean Aoidh, south of Portavadie; Eilean Leathan, Kilbrannan Sound just south of Torrisdale Bay; Island Muller, Kilbrannan Sound north of Campbeltown.

Natural history

Around the Firth of Clyde, there are populations of red deer, red squirrel, badger, otter, adder, and common lizard. In the Firth itself, there are harbour porpoises, basking sharks and various species of dolphin. Davaar is home to a population of wild goats.

Over 200 bird species have been recorded as sighted in the area, including the black guillemot, the eider, the peregrine falcon, and the golden eagle. In 1981, there were 28 ptarmigans sighted on Arran, but in 2009 it was reported that extensive surveys had been unable to find any recorded ptarmigans sightings. Similarly, the red-billed chough no longer breeds on the island.

Arran has three species of the rare endemic trees known as Arran Whitebeams: the Scottish or Arran whitebeam; the cut-leaved whitebeam; and the Catacol whitebeam. All of them are found only in Gleann Diomhan, and they are amongst the most endangered tree species in the world. (Gleann Diomhan was formerly part of a designated national nature reserve—the designation was removed in 2011)- and it continues to be part of an area designated as a Site of Special Scientific Interest.) Only 283 Arran whitebeam and 236 cut-leaved whitebeam were recorded as mature trees in 1980, and it is thought that grazing pressures and insect damage are preventing regeneration of the woodland. The Catacol whitebeam was discovered in 2007, but only two specimens have been found, so steps have been taken to protect them.

Etymology

The Roman historian Tacitus refers to the Clota, meaning the Clyde. The derivation is not certain but is probably from the Brythonic Clouta, which became Clut in Old Welsh. The name literally means "wash", probably referring to a river goddess who is seen as "the washer" or "the strongly flowing one". The derivation of the word “Bute” is also uncertain. The Norse name for it is Bót an Old Irish word for "fire", which might be a reference to signal fires. The etymology of “Arran” is no clearer. Haswell-Smith (2004) suggests that it derive from a Brythonic word meaning "high place", although Watson (1926) suggests it may be pre-Celtic.

license: Creative Commons - Attribution Share-Alike - https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/

title: Islands of the Clyde


text:
International Bank Account Number

The International Bank Account Number (IBAN) is an internationally agreed upon system of identifying bank accounts across national borders to facilitate the communication and processing of cross border transactions with a reduced risk of transcription errors. An IBAN uniquely identifies the account of a customer at a financial institution. It was originally adopted by the European Committee for Banking Standards (ECBS) and since 1997 as the international standard ISO 13616 under the International Organization for Standardization (ISO). The current version is ISO 13616:2020, which indicates the Society for Worldwide Interbank Financial Telecommunication (SWIFT) as the formal registrar. Initially developed to facilitate payments within the European Union, it has been implemented by most European countries and numerous countries in other parts of the world, mainly in the Middle East and the Caribbean. By March 2024, 87 countries were using the IBAN numbering system.

The IBAN consists of up to 34 alphanumeric characters comprising a country code; two check digits; and a number that includes the domestic bank account number, branch identifier, and potential routing information. The check digits enable a check of the bank account number to confirm its integrity before submitting a transaction.

Background
Before IBAN, differing national standards for bank account identification (i.e. bank, branch, routing codes, and account number) were confusing for some users. This often led to necessary routing information being missing from payments. Routing information as specified by ISO 9362 (also known as Business Identifier Codes (BIC), SWIFT ID or SWIFT code, and SWIFT-BIC) does not require a specific format for the transaction so the identification of accounts and transaction types is left to agreements of the transaction partners. It also does not contain check digits, so errors of transcription were not detectable and it was not possible for a sending bank to validate the routing information prior to submitting the payment. Routing errors caused delayed payments and incurred extra costs to the sending and receiving banks and often to intermediate routing banks.

In 1997, to overcome these difficulties, the International Organization for Standardization (ISO) published ISO 13616:1997. This proposal had a degree of flexibility that the European Committee for Banking Standards (ECBS) believed would make it unworkable, and they produced a "slimmed down" version of the standard which, amongst other things, permitted only upper-case letters and required that the IBAN for each country have a fixed length. ISO 13616:1997 was subsequently withdrawn and replaced by ISO 13616:2003. The standard was revised again in 2007 when it was split into two parts. ISO 13616-1:2007 "specifies the elements of an international bank account number (IBAN) used to facilitate the processing of data internationally in data interchange, in financial environments as well as within and between other industries" but "does not specify internal procedures, file organization techniques, storage media, languages, etc. to be used in its implementation". ISO 13616-2:2007 describes "the Registration Authority (RA) responsible for the registry of IBAN formats that are compliant with ISO 13616-1 [and] the procedures for registering ISO 13616-compliant IBAN formats". The official IBAN registrar under ISO 13616-2:2007 is SWIFT.

IBAN imposes a flexible but regular format sufficient for account identification and contains validation information to avoid errors of transcription. It carries all the routing information needed to get a payment from one bank to another wherever it may be; it contains key bank account details such as country code, branch codes (known as sort codes in the UK and Ireland) and account numbers, and it contains check digits which can be validated at source according to a single standard procedure. Where used, IBANs have reduced trans-national money transfer errors to under 0.1% of total payments

Structure
The IBAN consists of up to 34 alphanumeric characters, as follows:
 * country code using ISO 3166-1 alpha-2 – two letters,
 * check digits – two digits, and
 * Basic Bank Account Number (BBAN) – up to 30 alphanumeric characters that are country-specific.

The check digits represent the checksum of the bank account number which is used by banking systems to confirm that the number contains no simple errors.

In order to facilitate reading by humans, IBANs are traditionally expressed in groups of four characters separated by spaces, the last group being of variable length as shown in the example below; when transmitted electronically however spaces are omitted. Current exceptions to this formatting are Burudi (4, 5, 5, 11, 2), Egypt (no spaces), Libya (4, 3, 3, 15), and El Salvador (2, 2, 4, 20).

Permitted IBAN characters are the digits 0 to 9 and the 26 Latin alphabetic characters A to Z. This applies even in countries where these characters are not used in the national language (e.g. Greece).

Basic Bank Account Number
The Basic Bank Account Number (BBAN) format is decided by the national central bank or designated payment authority of each country. There is no consistency between the formats adopted. The national authority may register its BBAN format with SWIFT but is not obliged to do so. It may adopt IBAN without registration. SWIFT also acts as the registration authority for the SWIFT system, which is used by most countries that have not adopted IBAN. A major difference between the two systems is that under SWIFT there is no requirement that BBANs used within a country be of a pre-defined length.

The BBAN must be of a fixed length for the country and comprise case-insensitive alphanumeric characters. It includes the domestic bank account number, branch identifier, and potential routing information. Each country can have a different national routing/account numbering system, up to a maximum of 30 alphanumeric characters.

Check digits
The check digits enable the sending bank (or its customer) to perform a sanity check of the routing destination and account number from a single string of data at the time of data entry. This check is guaranteed to detect any instances where a single character has been omitted, duplicated, mistyped or where two characters have been transposed. Thus routing and account number errors are virtually eliminated.

Processing
One of the design aims of the IBAN was to enable as much validation as possible to be done at the point of data entry. In particular, the computer program that accepts an IBAN will be able to validate:
 * Country code
 * Number of characters in the IBAN correspond to the number specified for the country code
 * BBAN format specified for the country code
 * Account number, bank code and country code combination is compatible with the check digits

The check digits are calculated using MOD-97-10 as per ISO/IEC 7064:2003 (abbreviated to mod-97 in this article), which specifies a set of check character systems capable of protecting strings against errors which occur when people copy or key data. In particular, the standard states that the following can be detected:
 * All single substitution errors (the substitution of a single character for another, for example  for  )
 * All or nearly all single (local) transposition errors (the transposition of two single characters, either adjacent or with one character between them, for example  or   for  )
 * All or nearly all shift errors (shifts of the whole string to the left or right)
 * High proportion of double substitution errors (two separate single substitution errors in the same string, for example  for  )
 * High proportion of all other errors

The underlying rules for IBANs is that the account-servicing financial institution should issue an IBAN, as there are a number of areas where different IBANs could be generated from the same account and branch numbers that would satisfy the generic IBAN validation rules. In particular cases where  is a valid check digit,   will not be a valid check digit, likewise, if   is a valid check digit,   will not be a valid check digit, similarly with   and.

The UN CEFACT TBG5 has published a free IBAN validation service in 32 languages for all 57 countries that have adopted the IBAN standard. They have also published the Javascript source code of the verification algorithm.

An English language IBAN checker for ECBS member country bank accounts is available on its website.

Validating the IBAN
An IBAN is validated by converting it into an integer and performing a basic mod-97 operation (as described in ISO 7064) on it. If the IBAN is valid, the remainder equals 1. The algorithm of IBAN validation is as follows:

 * 1) Check that the total IBAN length is correct as per the country. If not, the IBAN is invalid
 * 2) Move the four initial characters to the end of the string
 * 3) Replace each letter in the string with two digits, thereby expanding the string, where A = 10, B = 11, ..., Z = 35
 * 4) Interpret the string as a decimal integer and compute the remainder of that number on division by 97

If the remainder is 1, the check digit test is passed and the IBAN might be valid.

Example (fictitious United Kingdom bank, sort code 12-34-56, account number 98765432):

 * • IBAN: ||||align="right"|GB82 WEST 1234 5698 7654 32||
 * • Rearrange: ||||align="right"|W E S T12345698765432G B82||
 * • Convert to integer: ||||align="right"|3214282912345698765432161182||
 * • Compute remainder: ||||align="right"|3214282912345698765432161182|| mod 97 = 1
 * }
 * • Compute remainder: ||||align="right"|3214282912345698765432161182|| mod 97 = 1
 * }
 * }

Generating IBAN check digits
According to the ECBS "generation of the IBAN shall be the exclusive responsibility of the bank/branch servicing the account". The ECBS document replicates part of the ISO/IEC 7064:2003 standard as a method for generating check digits in the range 02 to 98. Check digits in the ranges 00 to 96, 01 to 97, and 03 to 99 will also provide validation of an IBAN, but the standard is silent as to whether or not these ranges may be used.

The preferred algorithm is:

 * 1) Check that the total IBAN length is correct as per the country. If not, the IBAN is invalid.
 * 2) Replace the two check digits by 00 (e.g., GB00 for the UK).
 * 3) Move the four initial characters to the end of the string.
 * 4) Replace the letters in the string with digits, expanding the string as necessary, such that A or a = 10, B or b = 11, and Z or z = 35. Each alphabetic character is therefore replaced by 2 digits
 * 5) Convert the string to an integer (i.e. ignore leading zeroes).
 * 6) Calculate mod-97 of the new number, which results in the remainder.
 * 7) Subtract the remainder from 98 and use the result for the two check digits. If the result is a single-digit number, pad it with a leading 0 to make a two-digit number.

Modulo operation on IBAN
Any computer programming language or software package that is used to compute D mod 97 directly must have the ability to handle integers of more than 30 digits. In practice, this can only be done by software that either supports arbitrary-precision arithmetic or that can handle 219-bit (unsigned) integers, features that are often not standard. If the application software in use does not provide the ability to handle integers of this size, the modulo operation can be performed in a piece-wise manner (as is the case with the UN CEFACT TBG5 JavaScript program).

Piece-wise calculation D mod 97 can be done in many ways. One such way is as follows:

 * 1) Starting from the leftmost digit of D, construct a number using the first 9 digits and call it N.
 * 2) Calculate N mod 97.
 * 3) Construct a new 9-digit N by concatenating the above result (step 2) with the next 7 or 8 digits of D. If there are fewer than 7 digits remaining in D but at least one, then construct a new N, which will have less than 9 digits, from the above result (step 2) followed by the remaining digits of D
 * 4) Repeat steps 2–3 until all the digits of D have been processed

The result of the final calculation in step 2 will be D mod 97 = N mod 97.

Example
In this example, the above algorithm for D mod 97 will be applied to D = 3214282912345698765432161182. (The digits are colour-coded to aid the description below.) If the result is one, the IBAN corresponding to D passes the check digit test.

 * 1) Construct N from the first 9 digits of D
 * N = 321428291
 * 1) Calculate N mod 97 = 70
 * 2) Construct a new 9-digit N from the above result (step 2) followed by the next 7 digits of D.
 * N = 702345698
 * 1) Calculate N mod 97 = 29
 * 2) Construct a new 9-digit N from the above result (step 4) followed by the next 7 digits of D.
 * N = 297654321
 * 1) Calculate N mod 97 = 24
 * 2) Construct a new N from the above result (step 6) followed by the remaining 5 digits of D.
 * N = 2461182
 * 1) Calculate N mod 97 = 1

From step 8, the final result is D mod 97 = 1 and the IBAN has passed this check digit test.

National check digits
In addition to the IBAN check digits, many countries have their own national check digits used within the BBAN, as part of their national account number formats. Each country determines its own algorithm used for assigning and validating the national check digits - some relying on international standards, some inventing their own national standard, and some allowing each bank to decide if or how to implement them. Some algorithms apply to the entire BBAN, and others to one or more of the fields within it. The check digits may be considered an integral part of the account number, or an external field separate from the account number, depending on the country's rules.

Most of the variations used are based on two categories of algorithms:

- ISO 7064 MOD-97-10: Treat the account number as a large integer, divide it by 97 and use the remainder or its complement as the check digit(s).

- Weighted sum: Treat the account number as a series of individual numbers, multiply each number by a weight value according to its position in the string, sum the products, divide the sum by a modulus (10, 11 or 26) and use the remainder or its complement as the check digit or letter.

In both cases, there may first be a translation from alphanumeric characters to numbers using conversion tables. The complement, if used, means the remainder r is subtracted from a fixed value, usually the modulus or the modulus plus one (with the common exception that a remainder of 0 results in 0, denoted as 0 → 0, as opposed to e.g. 0 → 97 meaning that if the reminder is zero the checksum is 97). Note that some national specifications define the weights order from right to left, but since the BBAN length in the IBAN is fixed, they can be used from left to right as well.

Adoption

International bank transactions use either an IBAN or the ISO 9362 Business Identifier Code system (BIC or SWIFT code) in conjunction with the BBAN (Basic Bank Account Number).

EEA and territories
The banks of most countries in Europe publish account numbers using both the IBAN format and the nationally recognised identifiers, this being mandatory within the European Economic Area.

Day-to-day administration of banking in British Overseas Territories varies from territory to territory; some, such as South Georgia and the South Sandwich Islands, have too small a population to warrant a banking system while others, such as Bermuda, have a thriving financial sector. The use of the IBAN is up to the local government—Gibraltar, formerly part of the European Union is required to use the IBAN, as are the Crown Dependencies, which use the British clearing system, and the British Virgin Islands have chosen to do so. , no other British Overseas Territories have chosen to use the IBAN. Banks in the Caribbean Netherlands also do not use the IBAN.

Single Euro Payments Area
The IBAN designation scheme was chosen as the foundation for electronic straight-through processing in the European Economic Area. The European Parliament mandated that a bank charge needs to be the same amount for domestic credit transfers as for cross-border credit transfers regulated in decision 2560/2001 (updated in 924/2009). This regulation took effect in 2003. Only payments in euro up to €12,500 to a bank account designated by its IBAN were covered by the regulation, not payments in other currencies.

The Euro Payments regulation was the foundation for the decision to create a Single Euro Payments Area (SEPA). The European Central Bank has created the TARGET2 interbank network that unifies the technical infrastructure of the 26 central banks of the European Union (although Sweden has opted out). SEPA is a self-regulatory initiative by the banking sector of Europe as represented in the European Payments Council (EPC). The European Union made the scheme mandatory through the Payment Services Directive published in 2007. Since January 2008, all countries were required to support SEPA credit transfer, and SEPA direct debit was required to be supported since November 2009. The regulation on SEPA payments increased the charge cap (same price for domestic payments as for cross-border payments) to €50,000.

With a further decision of the European Parliament, the IBAN scheme for bank accounts fully replaced the domestic numbering schemes from 31 December 2012. On 16 December 2010, the European Commission published regulations that made IBAN support mandatory for domestic credit transfer by 2013 and for domestic direct debit by 2014 (with a 12 and 24 months transition period respectively). Some countries had already replaced their traditional bank account scheme by IBAN. This included Switzerland where IBAN was introduced for national credit transfer on 1 January 2006 and the support for the old bank account numbers was not required from 1 January 2010.

Based on a 20 December 2011 memorandum, the EU parliament resolved the mandatory dates for the adoption of the IBAN on 14 February 2012. On 1 February 2014, all national systems for credit transfer and direct debit were abolished and replaced by an IBAN-based system. This was then extended to all cross-border SEPA transactions on 1 February 2016 (Article 5 Section 7). After these dates the IBAN is sufficient to identify an account for home and foreign financial transactions in SEPA countries and banks are no longer permitted to require that the customer supply the BIC for the beneficiary's bank.

In the run-up to the 1 February 2014 deadline, it became apparent that many old bank account numbers had not been allocated IBANs—an issue that was addressed on a country-by-country basis. In Germany, for example, Deutsche Bundesbank and the German Banking Industry Committee required that all holders of German bank codes ("Bankleitzahl") published the specifics of their IBAN generation format taking into account not only the generation of check digits but also the handling of legacy bank codes, thereby enabling third parties to generate IBANs independently of the bank. The first such catalogue was published in June 2013 as a variant of the old bank code catalog ("Bankleitzahlendatei").

Non-EEA
Banks in numerous non-European countries including most states of the Middle East, North Africa and the Caribbean have implemented the IBAN format for account identification. In some countries the IBAN is used on an ad hoc basis, an example was Ukraine where account numbers used for international transfers by some domestic banks had additional aliases that followed the IBAN format as a precursor to formal SWIFT registration. This practice in Ukraine ended on 1 November 2019 when all Ukrainian banks had fully switched to the IBAN standard.

The degree to which a bank verifies the validity of a recipient's bank account number depends on the configuration of the transmitting bank's software—many major software packages supply bank account validation as a standard function. Some banks outside Europe may not recognize IBAN, though this is expected to diminish with time. Non-European banks usually accept IBANs for accounts in Europe, although they might not treat IBANs differently from other foreign bank account numbers. In particular, they might not check the IBAN's validity prior to sending the transfer.

Banks in the United States do not use IBAN as account numbers for U.S. accounts and use ABA routing transit numbers. Any adoption of the IBAN standard by U.S. banks would likely be initiated by ANSI ASC X9, the U.S. financial services standards development organization: a working group (X9B20) was established as an X9 subcommittee to generate an IBAN construction for U.S. bank accounts.

Canadian financial institutions have not adopted IBAN and use routing numbers issued by Payments Canada for domestic transfers, and SWIFT for international transfers. There is no formal governmental or private sector regulatory requirement in Canada for the major banks to use IBAN.

Australia and New Zealand do not use IBAN. They use Bank State Branch codes for domestic transfers and SWIFT for international transfers.

IBAN formats by country
This table summarises the IBAN formats by country:
 * The kk after the two-character ISO country code represents the check digits calculated from the rest of the IBAN characters. If it is a constant for the country concerned, this will be stated in the Comments column. This happens where the BBAN has its own check digits that use the same algorithm as the IBAN check digits
 * The BBAN format column shows the format of the BBAN part of an IBAN in terms of upper case alpha characters (A–Z) denoted by "a", numeric characters (0–9) denoted by "n" and mixed case alphanumeric characters (a–z, A–Z, 0–9) denoted by "c". For example, the Bulgarian BBAN (4a,6n,8c) consists of 4 alpha characters, followed by 6 numeric characters, then by 8 mixed-case alpha-numeric characters
 * Descriptions in the Comments field have been standardised with country-specific names in brackets. The format of the various fields can be deduced from the BBAN field

In addition to the above, the IBAN is under development in countries below but has not yet been catalogued for general international use.

In this list
 * represent the IBAN checksum digits
 * represents an uppercase alpha character (A-Z)
 * represents an alphanumeric character (a–z, A–Z, 0–9)
 * represents a numeric character (0-9)

title: International Bank Account Number