The IMF has taken a first step towards giving emerging powers a greater say in the fund's decision-making process under reform plans.
Finance ministers and central bank governors representing the group's 184 member countries endorsed the new framework, which will give the IMF a greater role in policing members' exchange-rate policies.
They also agreed that some emerging economies needed more say in IMF decision-making that could lead to a proposal for increases in their voting shares by the next IMF gathering in September.
IMF managing director Rodrigo Rato will have the authority to bring nations together on an ad hoc basis to thrash out any economic misalignments based on IMF analyses.
Officials said this would create a new forum that better reflected the rise of Asia in the global economy and could possibly replace bodies like the Group of Seven industrial countries, which some say can no longer call all the shots.
One of the problems facing the G7 is that major economic players like China are not part of the club, even though it is the fourth-largest economy in the world.
An IMF proposal already circulated among members would give ad hoc increases to a small number of countries such as China, South Korea, Mexico and Turkey. Other nations that could also possibly qualify include Malaysia, Thailand and Singapore.
But tensions remain between industrial and developing countries over how to reallocate voting power beyond initial increases in the quotas for some emerging nations.