The Articles of Agreement are a complex, lengthy, and important instrument, and it was not to be expected that an instrument of this character would be so clear and comprehensive as to require little in the way of interpretation. A considerable number of interpretations have been necessary in order to enable the Fund to function efficiently. The overwhelming proportion of these interpretations have been adopted outside Article XVIII.

The Fund has published Selected Decisions of the Executive Directors and Selected Documents, now in its third issue (January 1965). The bulk of this publication, apart from documents, consists of decisions taken without recourse to Article XVIII. Even these decisions are only a portion of those that can be said to be of an interpretative character. The published collection is confined on the whole to those decisions of a general nature to which frequent reference is likely to be made. Numerous decisions that involve particular members or particular practices have not been included. In addition, although most decisions are adopted by the Executive Directors in a form which expressly states that they are decisions,²¹ they are sometimes less recognizable. For example, the decision, arrived at after much legal debate, that it was not consistent with the Articles for a member to move from a fixed par value for its currency to a fluctuating rate as a transition to another fixed par value, appears in a discussion on fluctuating rates in an Annual Report of the Executive Directors.²² Decisions on legal questions may be embedded in other documents as well. For example, paragraphs 20 and 22 of the Report of the Executive Directors on Increases in Quotas of Fund Members: Fourth Quinquennial Review establish the legal principle that the Fund may hold gold either as earmarked bars or on general deposit under which ownership of the bars vests in the depository.²³ In connection with interpretative decisions, the Rules and Regulations of the Fund deserve special mention because they “attempt to provide such operating rules, procedures, regulations, and interpretation as are necessary and desirable to carry out the purposes and powers contained in the Agreement, as supplemented by the By-Laws.”²⁴

It must not be thought that there is any essential difference between interpretations adopted under Article XVIII and those not adopted under that provision, apart from the more formal and authoritative character of the former. For example, the technique of arriving at interpretations does not differ according to the procedure followed. The attitude to the two classes of interpretation is the same: both are observed and applied as part of the Fund’s corpus juris. Nor can any distinction between them be made on the basis of their importance or the difficulties involved in arriving at them. A glance at Selected Decisions will show how fundamental are many of the interpretations that have not been subsumed under Article XVIII.

It is natural to ask why the Fund has adopted the practice of making most of its interpretations outside Article XVIII. It is not easy to answer this question because the practice has not been the result of any formal decision. The explanation may be that the adoption of interpretations outside Article XVIII preserves a certain informality precisely because these interpretations are not given the stamp of final authoritativeness that they would have under Article XVIII. The practice is thus more consistent with the spirit of consultation and collaboration which is the first declared purpose of the Fund and which is essential for its success. This informality can be preserved without any impairment of the safeguards for members. Moreover, if a member wished to have a question of interpretation pursued under Article XVIII, that course would be followed. Again, it has now become apparent that the reconsideration of Article XVIII interpretations may involve certain difficulties that would not be present in the case of other interpretations. This question is discussed in a later section. Whatever difference may have emerged in this connection in recent years, it cannot explain, except subconsciously, the preference established at an early date for interpreting the Fund’s charter outside Article XVIII.