THE WORLD BANK

In the wake of the global financial crisis, there has been increased interest in the IMF’s SDR, which was created in 1969 “to meet the need, as and when it arises, for a supplement to existing re-serve assets. ” However, despite support over time from a number of senior political leaders and leading academics, the SDR has never come close to achieving a status anywhere near that of “the principal reserve asset in the international monetary system ” en-visaged in the IMF’s Articles of Agreement (IMF 1944, Article VIII, Section 7). This note describes the renewed interest in the SDR and assesses the SDR’s prospects to contribute to greater stability in the international monetary system. What Is the SDR? A good place to start is with what the SDR is not. It is not a cur-rency, nor is it a claim on the IMF. Instead, it is a potential claim on the “freely usable currencies ” of IMF members. The “cre