It is essential for global economic governance to be further reformed in order to better reflect the growing role of emerging economies, economists said.
However, they did add that a lot depends on whether or not the United States is generous enough to budge.
"Emerging markets are a lot more important for the world economy today than they used to be," Gao Haihong, a research fellow at the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, said in a recent interview.
Global economic governance reform is expected to be part of the discussions at the upcoming spring meetings of the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and the World Bank (WB) in Washington over the weekend.
The current global architecture of economic governance, including the IMF, the World Bank and the World Trade Organization, was established in the aftermath of World War II, but it faces criticism for being not efficient and not reflective of a dynamic world economy.
Gao said the reforms need to be carried out on several fronts by moving towards a more diversified and balanced reserve currency system while reforming the current institutions.
There have been some breakthroughs recently. The IMF's 2010 quota and governance reforms took effect in January this year after the U.S. Congress took the necessary steps to approve the proposed changes.
Nevertheless, the United States, the world's only superpower, still retains its veto right. The U.S. voting share in the IMF only declined by 0.2 percentage points to 16.5 percent. The quota change basically involved a re-allocation of voting share from other developed economies to emerging economies like China, India, Russia, Brazil and South Africa.
Ross Buckley, professor of global financial governance at the University of New South Wales, said even the changes to the global governance framework are still too small.
"If we're having another Bretton Woods moment and creating an international financial system at the moment, it would look totally and utterly different to what we've got. China would have a really big voice, India would have a decent voice, Brazil would have a decent voice," he said. "The U.S. has still got a veto."
IMF chief Christine Lagarde described the reform as "historic" and a "crucial step forward." However, bolder steps are still needed.
