8 SOCIAL SCIENTIST The principal lender this time was Saudi Arabia which undertook to lend the Fund up to $5 billion annually for three years starting with 1811. Another set of 18 countries also undertook to lend the Fund a total amount of $1.15 billion over a two-year period. The resources thus raised by the Fund were again supposed to finance high-conditionality assistance to member countries under its policy of enlarged access. Two major questions arise with regard to the present IMF borrowing. The first question concerns the linking of Fund borrowing to its quotas. This cannot but be considered extremely restrictive. The less the Fund depends on quotas to provide it with its major resources, and that is how it should be, the more it will be necessary to relax the limits on Fund borrowing. As a measure of basic reform, it would be advisable to delink Fund borrowing altogether from quotas and instead relate it to factors such as anticipated payments imbalances, the likely demand for Fund support and the Fund's access to other resources. The second question concerns the type of sources the Fund should be allowed to tap for the purpose of its borrowing. The Fund has so far restricted itself to borrowing from governments/monetary authorities, and, more or less, precluded itself from resort to the private market. Although, lately it has been conceded that the possibility of the Fund resorting to the private market cannot altogether be ruled out, the dominant view has prevented this from coming about. At the same time, phenomenal expansion has been allowed to take place, virtually unchecked, in the size of the private market. The aggregate of bond issues plus net bank credit expanded from some $60 billion in 1970 to ^85 billion in 1972; thereafter it has expanded to over $1,800 billion by the end of 1985, with both the national monetary authorities as well as the Fund acting as virtual spectators. While the question of instituting some system of international surveillance over this market and the Fund's role in exercising such surveillance is a matter for serious consideration, it ought to be said, in the present context, that by denying the Fund access to the private market not only has the international community foresworn the use of a major, proved inst.ument of central banking control, namely open market operations, at the international plane, but also it has left untapped amajor source of finance for the Fund's operations. Indeed, if the Fund had a relatively easier access to the private market it could possibly have responded much more effectively to the situations like what emerged after the first and second rounds of oil price increases which resulted in immense payments surpluses on the one hand and equally large deficits on the other or what has emerged in more recent years with the piling up of debt obligations of the developing countries and U.S. payments deficits on the one hand and payments surpluses of countries like Japan and Germany on the other. Also, the Fund's access to the market would have reduced its dependence on governments for budget support, direct or indirect is not always easy to extend