On Friday, the executive board of the International Monetary Fund completed its first review of the aid given to Pakistan for economic reforms under the Extended Fund Facility lending programme, giving Pakistan immediate access to $1 billion.
The board also approved Pakistan authorities’ request for further financial aid under the Resilience and Sustainability Facility to help Pakistan foster economic perseverance in the face of increasing climate vulnerabilities, and it gives Pakistan authorities access to an additional $1.4 billion.
India strongly objected to this approval as a member of the IMF and abstained from the said vote, questioning “the efficacy of IMF programs given the poor track record of Pakistan” on adhering to the conditions of such schemes and using the funds for “state sponsored cross border terrorism”.
Last week, Reuters reported that India had asked the IMF for a broader review into the aid given to Pakistan under various schemes after terrorists attacked and killed 26 people in Pahalgam, Jammu and Kashmir.
Predictably, a lot of people in India are upset by this development and are questioning the IMF’s review process given the track record of Pakistan over the years.
Omar Abdullah, the chief minister of Jammu and Kashmir came down heavily on the IMF for the repeated bailouts given to Pakistan. In his post on X, he ‘doubted’ the international community’s desire for de-escalation, when they're ‘reimbursing Pakistan for the military supplies it has used in Poonch, Rajouri, Uri, Tangdhar’, referencing the shelling Pakistan army began after Operation Sindoor.
I’m not sure how the “International Community” thinks the current tension in the subcontinent will be de-escalated when the IMF essentially reimburses Pakistan for all the ordnance it is using to devastate Poonch, Rajouri, Uri, Tangdhar & so many other places.
— Omar Abdullah (@OmarAbdullah) May 10, 2025
However, a few Opposition leaders felt that the government’s stand wasn't strong enough, given it had only ‘abstained’ from the vote and hadn't voted ‘no’. Naturally, they expressed their criticism on social media.
Senior Congress leader Jairam Ramesh posted on X that his party had “demanded” that the government vote against Pakistan, but it had “chickened out”. He also claimed that a “strong NO” from the government of India “would've sent a powerful signal”.
Congress leader Srinivas BV also questioned the government’s intentions by just abstaining from the vote.
So, did the Modi government slack off in its stand at the IMF?
The answer is no, and it lies in IMF protocol.
The IMF procedure
Many Indian news outlets reported that in such a vote, a member nation can only vote in affirmative or abstain from it; there is no option to expressly vote no.
The Indian Express reported through a government source that rules of the IMF don’t permit a formal denial.
What is likely is that some people are assuming that the IMF’s terms are similar to that of the United Nations, where every member nation has a single vote and a country can choose to vote yes, or abstain, or vote no for any proposal. But this is not the case.
According to the terms summarised in ‘Qualifiers Used in Summings Up of Executive Board Meetings’, last updated on July 28, 2017: “Since the Fund’s inception, the Executive Board has emphasized the importance of seeking consensus rather than formal voting.”
It also clarifies that since 1946, the board prefers to get a “sense of the meeting” rather than taking a formal vote for taking decisions. “Rule C-10 of the IMF’s Rules and Regulations reflects this approach and provides that the Chair shall ordinarily ascertain the sense of the meeting in lieu of taking a formal vote. The ‘sense of the meeting’ is understood as a position supported by Executive Directors having sufficient votes to carry the question if a vote were taken.”
Newslaundry also spoke to Mitali Nikore, founder and chief economist at the economic research group Nikore Associates.
She confirmed that it is a procedural fact that the IMF review boards or executive boards do not have an option for a formal negative or ‘a hard no’ as a vote. A member country can only vote in agreement or abstain from the vote. An abstention typically happens only when a country wants to register its disagreement with a proposal.
Further elaborating on the approval granted to Pakistan, Nikore stated that once the IMF has approved any aid or programme for a country, then “the reviews tend to continue with the original approval”, unless there's major disapproval from a large number of member nations.
Also, not all countries carry equal weightage when it comes to voting. The size of a country’s economy and its contributions to the IMF are among the few factors that affect the weight behind a country’s vote and stance at the IMF. For instance, the United States of America is the biggest economy in the world and has the highest voting share at the IMF at 16.49 percent, compared to that of India at two percent. China’s share is a shade above at six percent but it rallies the vote of many other countries under its financial influence.
Nikore says, “India was the only country which stood in opposition to Pakistan. Even if we assume that the US had supported India’s stand against Pakistan in this review, that too wouldn’t have been enough to deter this approval. Because China, along with the votes of its ally countries, would have stood in agreement with it, and that ensures the policy continues.”
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