Private sector bankers and analysts at this week's meetings disagreed that the IMF's usefulness was coming to an end, and signed up to the idea that smaller countries should have more of a say in the IMF and World Bank.
'The Fund is getting repaid now, and is flush with money,' said David Beers, Standard & Poor's Managing Director for Sovereign and International Public Finance Ratings, in an interview with Emerging Markets.
As countries such as Brazil, Argentina and some Asian economies draw away from Fund programmes, he said, 'some of the traditional activities of official creditors, and the IMF in particular, are at a cyclical low period'. But he added: 'We don't expect that to last.
'Governments are going to find reasons to need financing from the IMF over the next couple of years as economies stumble. When that happens, they'll need funds that only the IMF can provide.'
At the moment, though, the issue is not more lending, but reduction of existing debt. Beers pointed out that one problem in those discussions has been that Òsome governments, particularly some of the smaller governments who weren't represented at the G8 meeting, are not on board with the mechanics of writing off debt.'
Gerard Lyons, Chief Economist at Standard Chartered Bank, said the Gleneagles commitment to debt reduction was 'a very positive statement that should be well received.'
'But debt relief is just one part of the view. Debt relief needs to be looked at in the broader context. New trade corridors are emerging in terms of both finance and trade between Africa and Asia, between the Middle East and Asia. There are significant capital flows in terms of investors between those regions as well.'
To take such shifts in the global economy into account, Lyons told Emerging Markets, 'it's important that global policy forums do change, and take on board not just Asia, but countries outside the industrialized world as well'.
Standard & Poor's has moved in a similar direction in recent years, working with the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) to increase the number of small economies it rates, particularly in Africa, even if they are not borrowing abroad.
Beers said: 'Many of the governments we're rating nowadays find benefits [from being rated] in areas other than cross-border financing.'
Increasingly, small economies are using such credit ratings to help develop their domestic capital markets, promote foreign direct investment and as a benchmark for private sector entities to borrow overseas.