Dr. Donal Donovan:

Countries are free to, and do, negotiate among themselves. There is an awful lot of toing and froing about how they decide to group themselves. That process is far removed from people like me on the staff. It is very political. We have nothing to do with it, so I do not know how it came about, but I believe it goes back a long way. When I joined the IMF in 1977, the constituency was then what it is today. I would say it dates from the founding of the IMF, perhaps.