Special Drawing Rights

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Special Drawing Rights (SDRs), type of international monetary reserve currency established (1968) by the International Monetary Fund (IMF). Created in response to worries concerning the limitations of gold and dollars as the sole means of settling international accounts, SDRs are designed to augment international liquidity by supplementing the standard reserve currencies. SDRs are assigned to the accounts of IMF members in proportion to their contributions to the fund. Each participating country agrees to accept them as exchangeable for reserve currencies in the settlement of international accounts. Deficit countries can use them to purchase stronger currencies, which then can be used to pay off balance-of-payments debts. As nations adopted the current system of floating exchange rates (1973), the value of SDRs began to be set relative to a "basket" of major currencies. In 1981 the IMF reduced the basket to five currencies (the U.S. dollar, German Deutschmark, Japanese yen, French franc, and British pound); in 1999 the Deutschmark and franc were replaced by their equivalents in the euro. All IMF accounting is done in SDRs, and commercial banks accept SDR-denominated accounts. The IMF has the exclusive right of allocating SDRs; the last such allocation was made in 1981.

Special Drawing Rights (SDRs) The standard unit of account used by the International Monetary Fund (IMF). In 1970 members of the IMF were allocated SDRs in proportion to the quotas of currency that they had subscribed to the fund on its formation. There have since been further allocations. SDRs can be used to settle international trade balances and to repay debts to the IMF itself. On the instructions of the IMF a member country must supply its own currency to another member, in exchange for SDRs, unless it already holds more than three times its original allocation. The value of SDRs was originally expressed in terms of gold, but since 1974 it has been valued in terms of its members' currencies. SDRs provide a credit facility for IMF members in addition to their existing credit facilities (hence the name); unlike these existing facilities they do not have to be repaid, thus forming a permanent addition to members' reserves and functioning as an international reserve currency.