Prime Minister David Cameron’s spokesman said the U.K. did not agree to increase its contribution to the International Monetary Fund at last week’s European Union summit.
“This report is untrue,” Steve Field told journalists in London after The Daily Telegraph reported today that the U.K.’s contribution might rise by 30 billion pounds ($46 billion). Field said “nothing’s changed” since the Group of 20 summit in Cannes last month, at which “we argued in the room that we need to make sure that the IMF is properly resourced.”
Euro-region leaders agreed Dec. 9 to increase IMF funding by 200 billion euros ($260 billion), with 50 billion euros coming from non-euro EU states, to give the fund extra capacity to lend to debt-strapped members of the single currency. Field said today that they weren’t in a position to make that commitment on behalf of other countries.
Jens Weidmann, the president of Germany’s Bundesbank, said yesterday it is prepared to provide as much as 45 billion euros to the IMF as long as nations outside the euro area also contribute. As well as the U.K., the U.S. has also said it won’t participate.
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