Asian participation will be among the many items on the agenda when the IMF and the World Bank hold their group annual meetings in Washington on Oct. 1, alongside meetings of the Group of Seven leading industrialized nations and China.

"We will discuss the world economy, support for low-income countries and how the IMF monitors economic conditions," said Hiroyuki Hino, director of the IMF’s Regional Office for Asia and the Pacific, at a briefing. "But the financial contribution of Asian countries, Japan in particular, as well as their representation in the IMF will also be a big point of discussion."

The IMF’s efforts to change the demographics of its organization, which was born out of fear of global economic crisis after World War II, come at a time when other postwar institutions ponder how to adapt their structure to reflect changing balances of power.

The UN is currently debating reform for its powerful Security Council, including expanding the committee to include countries like Japan, India, Germany and Brazil as permanent members.

As an example of the disparity that some Asian member-countries face in the IMF, funds from Japan account for 6.3 percent of the lender’s capital, but only 1.5 percent of the fund’s employees are Japanese, Hino also said.

The IMF is conducting a recruiting drive in Japan and other Asian countries for development economists, policy makers and financial auditors, but Asian employees do face a glass celling at both the IMF and the World Bank that would prevent them from leading the international lenders. The IMF’s board of directors traditionally elects a European as managing director. While the World Bank’s board typically chooses a US citizen to be its president, in a long-standing postwar convention.

"The election process for these officials has become more open, but it probably still needs to be opened further," Hino also said, suggesting that even more change is necessary at the two international lenders.