They are important but they have to be reformed and stop being instrument to mainly USA and European countries.

THINK TANK with policy agenda and armed with capital and credit ready to help its members to do what it should--- is both relevant and necessary. Membership of the IMF is voluntary, each member must pay its due and contribute to a common fund. It serves as co-operative lending institutions for member nations. Countries that experience financial or economic crises are either mismanaged or failed in their social engineering policies. When they need to be bailed out from their creative faikure they must be willing to accept conditions of its lender. There is nothing wrong with a doctor who prescribes medication and also tell the patient what to eat and not to eat. Likewise, the IMF is there to fix the sick nations among its member roster.

I think its crucial to sustain the business cycle, for example we could see that if a country needs funds, IMF is there to lend them that money. But as an organization it is an instrument for superpowers like USA and other european countries which means that there is a possibility of monopolization over economies through organizations like IMF and World Bank.

The IMF helped many countries with balance of payments and public debt problems . However, it has been severely criticized because along with the bailouts (loans) it offers comes also the notorious conditionality i.e,. imposition of economic policies that countries had to launch in order to qualify for the bailouts. Such policies were almost always recessionary, countries had to reduce government expenditures, raise taxes, reduce wages and pensions that often frustrated and much angered the citizens of the bailout recipient countries. As the voting power in the IMF was distributed according to economic position of countries in the world economy , wealthy nations kept large shares of the IMF capital (quotas) and voting power as well,

As the world economy has been changing the IMF did non make the necessary structural changes to reflect the economic distribution of income and wealth among nations especially the rising of the East Asian countries. For these reason the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank (AIIB) was launched in 2016 upon the initiative of China. It consists now of 93 members with a mission to promote economic development mainly in Asia and in other continents.as well. AIIB is clearly a competitor of the IMF. The IMF was never capable to bailout a large country because its limited financial capital.Therefore IMF, relevance was always limited.

As for the IMF role in the European Sovereign Debt Crisis, it was detrimental. Nonetheless EU is responsible for this, since upon the suasion of Germany's Chancellor Merkel and particularly her Finance Minister Schauble EU invited the IMF to participate in the bailouts programs. The EU and the IMF imposed conditionality and strong austerity to the bailout recipient countries. Such measures prolonged the crisis and brought the Eurozone near its collapse.

The EU is a group of relatively wealthy countries and alone should had handled the Eurocrisis without the IMF.

The Eurocrisis was particularly catastrophic to Greece which lost a quarter of its GDP and experienced 25 % unemployment.

The IMF/EU and German policies certainly are responsible of transforming Greece

from a developed country to an impoverished nation.The IMF, the EU and particularly Germany never recognized that their policies send millions of Europeans to poverty and to unemployment thus irrevocably changing the future of the Eurozone and the EU that are both seriously threatened by a breakup