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WASHINGTON — China, India and Russia will soon speak with a louder voice at the International Monetary Fund (IMF).

After years of opposition, the US Congress has dismantled the final barrier to reforms that will give the emerging-market powers more say in the affairs of the 188-nation global crisis lender.

The IMF reforms are part of a $1.1 trillion spending package approved by Congress on Friday, and signed into law by President Barack Obama.

Adopted in 2010 by the international community, the reforms were expected to take effect in 2012.

But with the United States holding by far the largest share of voting rights at the IMF, Congress' refusal to approve the reforms had held up their implementation, to the consternation of IMF management and members.

The blockage has been a sore point between President Barack Obama's Democratic administration and the opposition Republicans who control Congress.

Republicans had rejected the slightest favourable gesture towards the multinational organisation, the object of some criticism in Washington for its largesse toward Greece.

In recent years, international summits have unfailingly included a pointed reminder about the stalled reform process — seen as all the more frustrating since the United States was among the first countries to call for an IMF overhaul in 2010 amid the global financial crisis.

At the end of their last summit in mid-November in Turkey, the Group of 20 economic powers said in a statement that they "remain deeply disappointed" with the delay in reforms and "we urge the United States to ratify these reforms as soon as possible".

The long stall also led the so-called BRICS — Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa — to set up an economic alternative, launching in July 2014 their own monetary fund and development bank.

The US approval will likely ease their frustrations with the 70-year-old IMF, dominated by the US, Europe and Japan, as well as remove a major headache for the Obama administration.

"The IMF reforms reinforce the central leadership role of the United States in the global economic system and demonstrate our commitment to maintaining that position," US Treasury Secretary Jacob Lew said in a statement.

IMF credibility on line 

The reforms, however, are crucial for the IMF itself. They double the crisis lender's permanent financial resources, known as quotas, to some $660 billion.

The green light by Congress thus paves the way for the IMF to abandon some makeshift mechanisms it had adopted to keep its finances afloat and finance rescues of members in crisis.

But above all, it allows the Washington-based institution, founded in 1945, to better reflect the current interconnectedness of the world economy, exposed in stark relief during the 2008-2009 global crisis.  

The measures slightly reshuffle the IMF executive board by reducing the representation of advanced economies, particularly in Europe, to give a greater voice to dynamic emerging powers.

Currently China, the world's second-largest economy, has less than 4 per cent of voting rights at the IMF, only slightly less than Italy whose economy is five times smaller.

After the reforms are implemented, China will see its voting rights nearly double to over 6 per cent, the largest gain. For example, India's weight will rise from 2.3 per cent to 2.6 per cent.

The US action also hands a personal victory to the managing director of the IMF, Christine Lagarde, who has been pushing hard for the changes to preserve the credibility of the fund.

Lagarde once joked she would "do belly-dancing" if needed to get US ratification.

"The United States Congress approval of these reforms is a welcome and crucial step forward that will strengthen the IMF in its role of supporting global financial stability," Lagarde said.

Still, the reforms will not resolve all the representation problems at the IMF. With 16.5 per cent of voting rights, the United States remains the largest stakeholder and continues to hold veto power.

"The IMF reforms remove a stain on the institution's legitimacy," Eswar Prasad, a former IMF official, said. "However, the scars caused by the protracted delay in having these reforms ratified and put into operation will not be easily erased.

Also on Friday, The US Congress voted to repeal the 40-year-old ban on exporting US crude oil in an energy policy shift sought by Republicans as part of a bipartisan deal that also provided unprecedented tax incentives for wind and solar power.

The Senate, on a 65-33 vote, approved lifting the ban and providing five-year extensions of tax breaks to boost renewable energy development as part of a $1.8 trillion government spending and tax relief bill.

The House of Representatives passed legislation containing the energy provisions earlier in the day by a 316-113 tally.

The energy deal was hammered out in secret talks among congressional leaders over two weeks.

Senators Lisa Murkowski, a Alaska Republican, and Democrats Heidi Heitkamp of North Dakota and Martin Heinrich of New Mexico had worked for more than a year to get the deal.

Democrats who backed the deal asserted that its provisions encouraging renewable energy were important for combating global climate change.

"This is the biggest deal for addressing climate change that we are going to see," Heinrich said in an interview.

Heinrich added that Democrats may not have been able to get a better deal even if they controlled both chambers of Congress, now led by Republicans. Many Republicans have opposed Democratic proposals to address climate change.

Congress, concerned about US dependence on imported oil,  imposed the crude oil export ban after the Arab oil embargo of the early 1970s that sent gasoline prices soaring and contributed to runaway inflation. Arab members of the Organisation of the Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) imposed the embargo following the US decision to re-supply the Israeli military during the 1973 Arab-Israeli war.

Drillers have said lifting the ban would increase US oil security and give Washington's allies in Europe and Asia an alternative source of crude beyond OPEC and Russia. The bill could benefit oil companies including Exxon Mobil Corp., ConocoPhillips and Chevron.

Opponents of lifting the export ban said the action would harm the environment and could lead to an increase in fiery derailments of crude-carrying trains.

Due to a global glut in oil supplies, lifting the ban is not expected to lead to significant US export shipments for months or even years, but could give crude producers the increased flexibility they coveted.

Oil boom

Drillers said continuing the ban would choke a boom in shale oil production since 2008 particularly in North Dakota and Texas that has pushed domestic oil prices down from more than $100 a barrel to below $40.

Lifting the ban was "particularly important at a time when our industry is experiencing a period of extreme volatility and uncertainty", Ryan Lance, chairman and chief executive officer of ConocoPhillips, said in a statement.

House Democratic leader Nancy Pelosi and some others in her party had expressed concern that allowing US oil exports would hurt independent refiners by raising the price of domestic crude to international prices.

Tom O'Malley, executive chairman of refiner PBF Energy, said lifting the ban would lead at least one East Coast refinery to shut down, adding that his refineries in New Jersey and Delaware are less exposed.

"This is a crazy thing to do," O'Malley added. "Once you lift it, it's hard to reverse it."

Democrats in the Senate had secured some protections for independent refiners, allowing them to deduct transportation costs for gasoline and other fuels they make.

Pelosi on Friday said Democrats walked away with a victory, in the trade of oil exports for environmental goals.

She indicated that the environmental damage from exporting oil would be offset by 10 times because of measures in the bill such as the renewable power tax credits, funding of a parks conservation fund paid for with oil revenues and the elimination of measures that would have dismantled Obama's clean power rules on power plants.

"Now that we have leveled the playing field, the United States finally has an opportunity to compete and realise our nation's full potential as a global energy superpower," said George Baker, head of Producers for American Crude Oil Exports, a group that formed last year to press lawmakers to open the trade.

At more than 2,000 pages long, the spending portion of the bill funds the government through next September, preventing a shutdown and effectively taking difficult budget disputes off the table as the 2016 presidential campaign enters the primary season.

Most of the US senators running for the White House voted against the bill, including Republicans Ted Cruz and Rand Paul and Democrat Bernie Sanders. Republican Lindsey Graham voted in favour. Republican Senator Marco Rubio, who had been criticised by campaign rivals for missing votes, was absent from Congress on Friday.

Dozens of previously temporary tax breaks will now be permanent under the tax segment of the bill, which will cost $680 billion over 10 years and was promoted by corporate lobbyists and low-tax Republicans.

Middle-class Americans also gain. Students, low-income parents and teachers will receive tax aid, attracting support for the legislation from the White House and congressional Democrats.

"I'm not wild about everything in it," Obama said of the legislation. "I'm sure that's true for everybody. But it is a budget that, as I insisted, invests in our military and our middle class without ideological provisions that would have weakened Wall Street reform or rules on big polluters."

Deficit worries

Some Republicans worry that the $1.15 trillion spending provisions add to the federal budget deficit and erode the fiscal discipline that House Republicans have championed, particularly since lawmakers aligned with the conservative Tea Party movement did well in 2010 congressional elections.

But Tea Party momentum has slowed as the federal deficit drops from its peak of $1.41 trillion in 2009 due to the economic recovery. The deficit was $439 billion for the fiscal year that ended on September 30.

The congressional Joint Committee on Taxation estimates the legislation passed on Friday will increase the 2016 fiscal year budget deficit by $157 billion and by $95 billion in 2017.

Tim Huelskamp of Kansas, a leading House Republican fiscal hawk, said the bill was "an early Christmas present for Donald Trump", the billionaire businessman seeking the Republican presidential nomination, because it will fuel the anti-establishment mood in the country.

Conservatives complained that Republican leaders agreed on the bill's spending and tax provisions behind closed doors and then rushed the bill through the Senate on Friday morning.

"A rotten process yields a rotten result, and this 2,000-page, trillion-dollar bill is rotten to its core," Republican Senator Tom Cotton of Arkansas said. "Corporate lobbyists had a field day, but working Americans lost out."

Some Democrats criticised the tax cuts, saying they give more aid to large corporations and wealthy business owners than to working families.

The largest component of the tax package is the business research and development tax credit, which will cost $113 billion over a decade in lost government revenues.

AMMAN —  The European Bank for Reconstruction and Development (EBRD) announced Saturday in a press sattement that it has  teamed up with Capital Bank of Jordan and Societé Générale Jordan to support the Ayla Oasis project. 

"The EBRD will provide a $60 million loan, while the two commercial banks will contribute $20 million each, for the development of Ayla Village, which will serve as the vibrant hub of Ayla Oasis," the statement said.

"Investments include the construction of a public promenade merging the old centre of Aqaba with the planned souk area as a new meeting place for locals and visitors, offering modern retail and entertainment space," it added.

"Two new hotels will serve locals as well as international visitors and one will be managed by Hyatt International Corporation, a leading global brand in the tourism and hospitality industry. EBRD President Suma Chakrabarti said:“We are proud to support a project that will develop Jordan’s potential as a tourism destination, one of the country’s major assets.

In particular, this will be done in an economically, environmentally and socially sustainable way. We are confident that this investment will help Aqaba become a prime destination on the Red Sea.”

WASHINGTON — Federal Reserve (Fed) Chair Janet Yellen conceded Wednesday the Fed's rate increase could hurt some emerging economies, but that it represents a strong US economy that is good for global growth.

"There can be negative spillovers through capital flows, but remember, there are also positive spillovers from a strong US economy," Yellen said shortly after announcing the Fed's first rate increase in over nine years.

"This action takes place in the context of a US economy that is doing well, and is a source of strength to the emerging markets and other economies around the globe," she added.

After holding its benchmark rate near zero in a crisis stance since December 2008, the Fed increased the rate by a quarter-point to 0.25-0.5 per cent on Wednesday and projected as much as another 1 percentage point climb over the next year.

That can raise borrowing costs for foreign governments and businesses with significant dollar exposure, even as many face slower economic growth.

While the prospects for tighter US monetary policy have already spurred capital outflows and currency falls in many emerging market economies, Yellen said the move was strongly telegraphed.

"I think this move has been expected and well-communicated, at least I hope that it has. So I don't think it's a surprise," she added in a press conference.

"We have made a commitment to emerging-market policy makers that we would do our best to communicate as clearly as we could about our policy intentions, to avoid spillovers that might result from abrupt or unanticipated policy moves," Yellen elaborated.

She noted that many emerging economies are stronger than they were in the 1990s, and are better-positioned to deal with the US policy tightening today.

"On the other hand, there are vulnerabilities there, and there are countries that have been badly affected by declining commodity prices," she said. "So we will monitor this very carefully, but we have taken care to avoid unnecessary negative spillovers."

"With the economy performing well and expected to continue to do so, the committee judges that a modest increase in the federal funds rate is appropriate," Yellen told Journalists after the rate decision was announced. "The economic recovery has clearly come a long way."

The Fed's policy statement noted the "considerable improvement" in the US labour market, where the unemployment rate has fallen to 5 per cent, and said policymakers are "reasonably confident" inflation will rise over the medium term to the Fed's 2 per cent objective.

The central bank made clear the rate hike was a tentative beginning to a "gradual" tightening cycle, and that in deciding its next move it would put a premium on monitoring inflation, which remains mired below target.

"The process is likely to proceed gradually," Yellen said, a hint that further hikes will be slow in coming.

She added that policymakers were hoping for a slow rise in rates but one that will keep the Fed ahead of the curve as the economic recovery continues. 

"To keep the economy moving along the growth path it is on ... we would like to avoid a situation where we have left so much [monetary] accommodation in place for so long we have to tighten abruptly," Yellen elaborated.

New economic projections from Fed policymakers were largely unchanged from September, with unemployment anticipated to fall to 4.7 per cent next year and economic growth hitting 2.4 per cent.

The Fed statement and its promise of a gradual path represented a compromise between policymakers who have been ready to raise rates for months and those who feel the economy is still at risk from weak inflation and slow global growth.

"The Fed is going out of its way to assure markets that, by embarking on a 'gradual' path, this will not be your traditional interest rate cycle," said Mohamed Al Erian, chief economic advisor at Allianz.

Fed officials said they were confident the situation was ripe for them to make a historic turn in policy without much disruption to financial markets, which had expected the hike this week.

Yellen on Wednesday said the Fed had no desire to curb consumers from spending or businesses from investing. She emphasised that interest rates remained low even after the rate hike, near levels economists regard as appropriate for a recession.

"Policy remains accommodative," Yellen said. "The US economy has shown considerable strength. Domestic spending has continued to hold up."

Fed policy makers' median projected target interest rate for 2016 remained 1.375 per cent, implying four quarter-point hikes next year. Based on short-term interest rate futures markets, traders expect the next rate hike in April.

A December 9 Reuters poll showed economists forecasting the federal funds rate to be 1.0 per cent to 1.25 per cent by the end of 2016 and 2.25 per cent by the end of 2017.

The rate hike sets off an immediate test of new financial tools designed by the New York Fed for just this occasion, as well as a likely reshuffling of global capital as the reality of rising US rates sets in.

To edge the target rate from its current near-zero level to between 0.25 per cent and 0.5 per cent, the Fed said it would set the interest it pays banks on excess reserves at 0.5 per cent, and would offer up to $2 trillion in reverse repurchase agreements, an aggressive figure that shows its resolve to pull rates higher.

The impact on business and household borrowing costs is unclear.

NAIROBI — Global trade talks opened Tuesday with host Kenya highlighting their role in combating poverty, and urging African nations to diversify their economies.

War-torn Afghanistan and Ebola-ravaged Liberia are set to join the World Trade Organisation (WTO) as it holds a ministerial conference in the Kenyan capital Nairobi, its first such meeting on African soil.

Leading experts have doubted the  meeting's chances of breathing new life into current trade talks, but Kenyan President Uhuru Kenyatta still called the gathering "historic and crucial".

"This conference will boost trade and investment, create employment and ultimately contribute to poverty eradication," he said in a welcome message.

He also stressed the need for African countries to diversify their economies.

"National, regional and multilateral policy choices that we make will matter," Kenyatta added. "The choices and positions we take will have consequences."

Security is tight for the conference, with some 6,000 delegates in Nairobi.

'Breakthrough seems unlikely' 

The four-day Nairobi meeting comes two years after ministers from WTO member countries reached a landmark deal in Bali on overhauling global customs procedures.

The 2013 pact was the first multilateral agreement concluded by the WTO since its inception in 1995, and also the first concrete progress since the Doha round of trade liberalisation talks began. 

"We took 18 years to deliver our first multilateral agreement in Bali, that's way too long, we can't wait another 18 years to deliver again," WTO chief Roberto Azevedo told reporters Tuesday.

But there are few signs that countries will be able build on the momentum gained in Bali to carve out even a limited deal in Nairobi.

"I think if we go out of Nairobi with renewed confidence and with a common vision for the future that will be a fundamental achievement," Azevedo said.

Insiders say negotiators will focus on trying to nail down a partial deal focused on agriculture export competition and trade development in the world's poorest nations, but admit the chances of succeeding are shaky at best. 

Agriculture, export subsidy deals? 

"It will attempt to deliver on the elusive agreements of the Doha Development Agenda, and deal with controversies over agricultural subsidies and market access for developing countries," the European Centre for Development Policy Management (ECDPM) think tank said.

"However, despite previous efforts, scant progress has been made and a breakthrough at Nairobi seems unlikely," it added.

WTO Deputy Director David Shark was more upbeat, saying it was hoped that deals would be struck on agriculture, export subsidies and food security, and that there would be a debate on the nature of international trade.

"There is a very broad issue that members are discussing: how do we conduct trade negotiations in the future," he said.

"Do we continue in the same vein as we have under the umbrella of the Doha round? Or do we look for new and different ways? That is a very contentious issue amongst our members," Shark added.

Kenyan Foreign Minister Amina Mohammed, who is chairing the conference, has warned that a failure to strike a deal, requiring every member's agreement, would raise questions about the negotiating role of the WTO.

"We will need to either fix it, agree on a new way of negotiating or maybe agree to remove it," she said.

Ceremonies for the accession of Liberia are expected to be held on December 16, with the accession of Afghanistan a day later, the WTO said.