By David Lawder
WASHINGTON (Reuters) -&nbsp;Japan&nbsp;has&nbsp;pledged to double the percentage of International Monetary Fund Special Drawing Rights monetary reserves that it will reallocate to poorer&nbsp;countries&nbsp;to&nbsp;40%,&nbsp;Japanese Finance Minister Shunichi Suzuki said on Wednesday.
Suzuki told a news conference that he made the&nbsp;pledge&nbsp;to a meeting of G7 finance ministers and central bank governors on Wednesday. Previously,&nbsp;Japan&nbsp;had said it would&nbsp;channel&nbsp;20% of the&nbsp;SDRs it received in a 2021 general&nbsp;allocation&nbsp;to&nbsp;needier&nbsp;countries&nbsp;via&nbsp;IMF&nbsp;trust funds.
In the $650 billion&nbsp;allocation&nbsp;aimed at helping&nbsp;IMF&nbsp;member&nbsp;countries&nbsp;cope with the COVID-19 pandemic,&nbsp;Japan&nbsp;- the second-largest&nbsp;IMF&nbsp;shareholder - received 29.5 billion&nbsp;SDRs, worth about $39.7 billion at current exchange rates. A&nbsp;40%&nbsp;allocation&nbsp;would be valued at about $15.9 billion.
France had previously&nbsp;pledged the highest percentage of its $26 billion&nbsp;SDR&nbsp;allocation, at 30%, to&nbsp;IMF&nbsp;trust funds, including the new Resilience and Sustainability Trust.
IMF&nbsp;Managing Director Kristalina Georgieva said on Monday the new trust has about $40 billion in assets and there were 44&nbsp;countries&nbsp;interested in borrowing from this trust for climate and other needs.
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(Reporting by David Lawder; Editing by Leslie Adler &amp; Shri Navaratnam)

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Japan to channel 40% of IMF SDR allocation to needier countries, doubling pledge