BURDEN SHARING AT THE IMF

In the context of the financial governance of the International Monetary Fund, what are the equity implications of the way in which the IMF distributes the cost of running its regular (non-concessionary) lending operations as well as how it funds its concessionary lending and debt relief operations? While the IMF charges borrowers roughly what it pays its creditor members for the resources used in its regular lending operations, its overhead costs (administrative budget plus addition to reserves) are shared between the two groups of members in a less equitable manner. With overhead costs rising inexorably to meet the increasing number and range of responsibilities being placed on the institution – largely at the instance of the IMF‘s principal creditors by virtue of their dominant majority of voting power – the under-representation of the IMF’s debtors undermines the legitimacy of its decision making. With regard to the concessionary lending and debt relief operations, some of the IMF’s funding modalities have involved a substantial contribution by IMF debtors, sometimes under pressure. While this has been accepted as part of an intra-developing-country burden-sharing exercise, it has also significantly reduced the cost to developed countries of meeting their responsibilities to the poorest members of the international community.

THE FUTURE ROLE OF THE INTERNATIONAL MONETARY FUND

This paper looks at the role of the International Monetary Fund (IMF) in the evolving global financial system from the perspective of developing country interests. It finds that on certain issues, such as the scope and purposes of its lending operations, a consensus has been reached that IMF should continue to serve all its members, including the poorest, and that its resources should be available for supporting macro-relevant structural reforms as well as for dealing with financial crises. On a number of other issues, there remain differences between industrial and developing country views, including on the extension of IMF surveillance to cover the observance of international standards and codes. Largely unsettled are the modalities of the involvement of the private sector in crisis resolution, with special reference to the development of arrangements in the international sphere that would be analogous to domestic bankruptcy procedures, including the declaration of standstills and principles for orderly and equitable debt workouts. The liberalization of the capital account and the choice of exchange regimes are two interconnected areas in which international prescriptions conflict with developing country insistence on the preservation of national autonomy and in favour of intermediate regimes, as opposed to corner solutions. The scope and content of IMF conditionality raises the issue of how to reconcile it with the importance of assuring country ownership. Finally, the governance of IMF poses questions about the exercise of decision-making powers in the institution. Developing country positions are evolving in all these areas, especially on the subject of private-sector involvement in financial crisis prevention and resolution. However, there appears to be a general preference for a more rules-based framework, rather than one derived on a “case-by-case” basis. There are four areas of great interest to developing countries where the international debate has remained muted or has been largely absent in the recent literature: these relate to the surveillance over, and coordination of, the macroeconomic policies of the three principal international currency issuers; the relationship of international and regional arrangements; the distribution of voting power in both IMF and the international system generally, and the future evolution of the international reserve system.

Strategic Role of Strategic Management Accounting Towards Enhancing SMEs Performance in Iraq

The concept of strategic management accounting is related to the provisions and use of accounting information by people in the organization such as the management and the managers, for the purpose of making business decisions that would allow them to have competitive advantage and able to effectively control the firm’s activity. The major purpose of this study is to investigate strategic role of strategic management accounting towards enhancing SMEs’ performance in Iraq. The study generated data from 101 SMEs in Iraq through a cross-sectional questionnaire survey approach using drop and pick means of data distribution. The findings from the hypotheses tested show that factors such as : information, people and government policy are key factors impacting SMEs’ performance. This further suggests that these factors are crucial in enhancing SMEs performance. However, the findings also show that technology does not affect the SMEs’ performance. The same finding occurred on the relationship between strategic management accounting and SMEs performance. However, these results should be interpreted with caution bearing in mind the environment upon which this study was conducted.This study would be of benefit to both researchers and SMEs owners as it would provide a guideline upon which decisions regarding SMEs performance are to be made while also acting as springboard for future research. Based on the findings obtained in this study, the study concludes that information, people and government policy are significant factors required to enhance SMEs’ performance

The influence of safety management practices towards safety performance among insured person in commuting accident

Safety performance play the crucial role in safety management development at the workplace. It’s also contribute the main indicator to the success of accident prevention programme. This study purposely to examine the relationship between safety performance with safety management practise. Theory plan behaviour was applied to develop conceptual framework. In this study safety management practise was independent variable and safety performance was dependent variable. While the safety motivation and employees’ competency were mediating variable. Quantitative approach was applied in methodology of this study which involved 615 respondents among insured employees who involved in commuting accident.Regression analysis revealed that safety management practise, safety motivation, and employees’ competency have positive relationship significantly with safety performance. Safety motivation and employees’ competency was found mediated the relationship between safety management practice and safety performance. This study highlighted the organisation should give priority to improve their safety accident prevention programme by enhance employees’ knowledge, skills and abilities. In addition, employees; characteristics should be taken into account during the development of safety training need analysis

IFI Conditionality on Governance

This note looks at the dilemmas faced in the application of conditions on governance by the international financial institutions (IFI) in the course of their lending operations in member states. Governance relates to the activities of governments and other public sector entities in the exercise of their financial and regulatory functions and that bear directly on the proper use of funds provided by the IFI. Given the extensive range of state action, conditions relating to governance can apply to diverse areas, including the allocation of public expenditures and the collection of taxes, the rules affecting procurement of goods and services by public authorities, the effectiveness of the judicial system in enforcing contracts and the arbitration of claims and obligations between governments and all the social entities they deal with

Exfoliación por cizallamiento de nanohojuelas de grafeno como electrodo en supercondensadores

Introduction: The graphene has received a great attention becauseof its extraordinary characteristics of high carrier mobility, excellent thermal conductivity, high optical transmittance, and superiormechanical strength. Developing a simple methods with the property of producing large quantities of high-quality graphene havebecome essential for electronics, optoelectronics, composite materials, and energy-storage applications. Materials and Methods: Inthis study, the simple one step and efficient method of grindingwas used to produce few-layers graphene nanoflakes from graphite.Different microscopic (TEM, SEM, and AFM) and spectroscopics(XRD, XPS, and Raman) charactrization tools were used to testthe quality of the resultant graphene nanoflakes. Results: The produced nanoflakes showed no traces of oxidation due to the grindingprocess. In addition, the applicability of the obtained nanoflakes aspotential supercapacitor electrodes was investigated. For that purpose, thin films of the few-layer graphene nanoflakes were developed using spray coating technique. In terms of both transparencyand conductivity, the prepared films showed equivalent propertiescompared to those prepared by more complex methods. The electrochemical properties of the prepared electrodes showed highspecific capacitance of 86 F g_1 at 10 A g_1 with excellent stability.The electrodes sustained their original capacity for more than 7000cycles and started reducing to 72 F g-1 after 10000 cycles. Conclussions: The method provides a simple, efficient, versatile, andeco-friendly approach to low-cost mass production of high-qualitygraphene few-layers. The electrochemical stability and flexibility ofthe developed thin films indicated that the films could be used aselectrodes in a wide range of electronic applications

Relationship Quality: Its Antecedents and Consequence in the Context of Retailer-Supplier Relationship in Bangladesh

Relationship quality plays a very important role in shaping business relationships. Therefore it has become imperative to develop research models to explain relationship quality. This study investigated the influence of antecedent factors such as participation in decision making, communication, termination cost, switching cost and operational cost on retailers’ relationship quality in the context of retailers’ relationships with their suppliers in Bangladesh’s retail industry. This study also investigated the relationship between retailers’ relationship quality and its impact on loyalty towards the suppliers. This study further identified the moderating role of relationship duration on the relationship between relationship quality and loyalty. Data for this study was collected using mail survey from 121 independent retailers in all over the geographic territory of Bangladesh. The study establishes that three antecedent factors namely termination cost, switching cost and operational cost (by order of importance) to have significant relationship with retailers’ relationship quality. Consequently, the study also indicated that retailers’ relationship quality significantly influences their loyalty toward their suppliers. Nevertheless, duration of relationship was able to significantly moderate the relationship between retailers’ relationship quality and their loyalty toward their suppliers

Estimation Some of Metal Ions and Biological Constituents of Local Rheum Ribes (Rhubarb) of Kurdistan Region - IRAQ

It is an attempt to determine the levels of (1) minerals by using ICP spectrophotometer; (2) the fatty acids, by using (HBLC) chromatography technique; (3) vitamin C by using Redox titration method. Levels were found to be as bellow: 1. Metal ions levels were found to be gradually decreased from monovalent to divalent ions, whereas the levels of biological constituents were varied and resulted in : Ash(fibers) = % 6.702 , Water %86, Linolenic acid 39.08 µg/ml , ?- Linoleic acid 31.32 µg/ml,  Arachidic  acid  12.13 µg/ml, Erucic acid 4.1 µg/ml and Vitamin C 4.83 µg/ml. 2. As shown the levels of fatty acids were decreased with increasing unsaturated.   Keywords: metal ions, fatty acids, and ascorbic acid in Rheum Ribes (Rhubarb)

Polymer Retention during Flow of Polymer Solutions through Porous Media

Polymer solution flow and retention through porous media is of interest to many applications in the oil industry such as drilling, water shut-off and enhanced oil recovery. Operators of mature oil and gas fields are faced with the problem of excessive water production (EWP), which can cause a premature abandonment of some oil and gas wells. It has been found that the injection of high molecular weight polymer solutions through the pay zones of the oil and gas wells would induce a sharp decrease of the water production without affecting the oil and gas production. This effect is called disproportionate permeability reduction (DPR) and the polymer solutions inducing such an effect are called relative permeability modifiers (RPM). Hence, the DPR effect has been utilized in the water shut-off or conformance control of oil and gas wells suffering from EWP. In spite of the extensive research of the DPR effect, there is still a lack of agreement on the mechanisms controlling such an effect and relatively high percentage failures are observed during conformance control field applications. Polymer retention in porous media has been attributed to mechanisms such as bridging-adsorption, adsorption-entanglement, and flow-induced adsorption. These mechanisms have been proposed to account for the increase in flow resistance during or after the flow of polymer solutions through porous media. The DPR effect has been attributed to effects induced by this retained polymer such as steric and lubrication effects, wettability change, segregated oil and water pathways, and swelling and shrinking of the adsorbed polymer layer. The aim of this study is to add knowledge on the effect of polymer solution flow on polymer retention in porous media. In this study, the rheology of high molecular weight polymer solutions was studied using a cone-and-plate setup. Moreover, the characteristics and the effective hydrodynamic thickness of adsorbed polymer layers on glass from these polymer solutions under static conditions were investigated using atomic force microscopy (AFM). Also, quartz crystal microbalance with the dissipation monitoring (QCM-D) was used to investigate the effect of increasing the flow rate of polymer solutions on the adsorbed amount on silica and gold surfaces. Additionally, the mobility reduction and the residual resistance as a result of polymer solution flow through single glass capillaries, 2D and 3D models of porous media were studied. The implementation of the above techniques was used to relate the microscopic effect of the flow of the polymer solutions to the polymer retention in the porous media. The anti-thixotropic behaviour of the polymer solutions, which can be attributed to the shearinduced formation of micron-size transient entanglement networks (TEN), is expected to play a major role in the polymer retention in porous media. These microscopic structures can adsorb on the solid surfaces if the adsorption energy of the polymer/solid system is sufficient. Also, in porous media in which mechanical entrapment is possible, these structures can be entrapped in the small pores and pore throats. Two new mechanisms for polymer retention are proposed in this study: transient-entanglement networks adsorption (TENA) and transient-entanglement networks entrapment (TENE). The TENA is the retention mechanism of the TEN structures in flow systems in which mechanical entrapment is not possible provided that the adsorption energy is sufficient. If mechanical entrapment is possible, then the retention by adsorption and mechanical entrapment are lumped in the TENE mechanism. The results from this study have given a new insight on the flow and retention of polymer solutions through porous media. Hence, it is believed that the improved understanding will improve the design of high molecula