special drawing rights

Special drawing rights (SDRs, code XDR) are supplementary foreign exchange reserve assets defined and maintained by the International Monetary Fund (IMF). SDRs are units of account for the IMF, and not a currency per se. SDRs represent a claim to currency held by IMF member countries for which they may be exchanged. When SDRs were created in 1969, they were each worth 0.888671 grams of gold, roughly the equivalent of one US dollar at the time. In 1973, following the termination of the Bretton Woods agreement in 1971, the IMF redefined the SDR as equivalent to the value of a specific selection of world currencies.

SDRs are allocated by the IMF to countries and central banks, and cannot be held or used by private parties. The number of SDRs in existence was around XDR 21.4 billion in August 2009. During the 2008 financial crisis, an additional XDR 182.6 billion was allocated to "provide liquidity to the global economic system and supplement member countries' official reserves". By October 2014, the number of SDRs in existence was XDR 204 billion. Due to economic stress caused by the response to the COVID-19 pandemic, several finance ministers of poorer countries called for a new allocation to support member economies as they seek ways to recover, and some economists called for the allocation to be as high as $4T. In March 2021, the G24 and others proposed an allocation of $500B for this purpose. In response, XDR 456.5 billion (about US$650B) was allocated on 23 August 2021.