The aim of these ad hoc proposals is to maintain, to the extent possible, the IMF's holdings of U.S. dollars close to the average of its holdings of other members' currencies in terms of quota. Members that have relatively large reserve tranche positions, but that are not considered in sufficiently strong external positions to be included on the transfer side of the operational budget, may have their currencies included, with their concurrence, on the receipt side of the budget to facilitate payment of repurchases. The inclusion for receipts of relatively weak members allows for a change in the composition of their reserves, with declines in their reserve tranche positions being matched by increases in foreign exchange reserves. The IMF does not use currencies of members to which it is extending credit to finance the use of IMF resources by other members. Procedures have also been established for the exchange of each freely usable currency into other freely usable currencies.
Similar procedures apply to exchanges of currencies related to repurchases.
Although gold is an asset in the IMF's balance sheet, it is not regarded as an immediately usable resource and is not used in the IMF's operations and transactions. If the IMF determines that its holdings of a member's currency in the GRA are low, it may replenish its holdings by requiring the member to sell its currency to the IMF for SDRs. The guidelines appear in Selected Decisions under the heading of the associated Articles. The assessment of external strength in the case of monetary unions poses special issues. For example, the natural economic area for judging balance of payments and reserve strength would be the monetary union as a whole rather than the individual member country, while the IMF's member continues to be the individual country and not the monetary union.