The International Monetary Fund (IMF) Thursday appointed a committee of eminent persons to assess the adequacy of the Fund's current framework for decision making and advise on any modifications that might enable the institution to fulfill its global mandate more effectively.

"Important progress has been made in the reform of the Fund's governance, including the initiation of a process to realign members' voting power within the Fund," said IMF Managing Director Dominique Strauss-Kahn.

"However, the task of enhancing the Fund's legitimacy and effectiveness must also come to grips with the question of whether the significant changes since the establishment of the Fund require reform of the institutional framework through which members' voting power is actually exercised," he stated.

"The committee's perspective, which I hope to have by next April, will provide yet another important input to our reform efforts," he said, adding he hopes that concrete proposals can be distilled from this large body of work by September 2009.

The eight-member committee was chaired by Trevor Manuel, minister of finance of South Africa.

The IMF is governed by, and is accountable to, its member countries through its Board of Governors. There is one governor from each member country, typically the finance minister or central bank governor. The governors usually meet once a year, in September or October, at the Annual Meetings of the IMF and the World Bank.