WASHINGTON, April 9 (Reuters) - The International Monetary Fund is considering ways to issue the $250 billion in Special Drawing Rights to member countries agreed to by the G20 last week to boost liquidity, an IMF spokeswoman said on Thursday.
Spokeswoman Caroline Atkinson said the proposal will require approval by 85 percent of the IMF's board of governors, made up of finance ministers or central bankers from the IMF's 185 member countries.
SDRs are the IMF's unit of account and their value is based on a basket of currencies including the dollar, Japanese yen, British pound and euro.
"We are working intensively on getting papers ready ... to look at options for how to do the SDR allocation and when to do it," Atkinson told a regular news briefing, a week after the G20 leaders' summit in London.
"I can't give you a date for when we expect it to be completed but we're hopeful it won't be too long," Atkinson added.
The G20 agreed to a trillion-dollar boost for the IMF, including $750 billion for total lending to countries hit by the financial crisis, and an additional $250 billion issued in SDRs to boost members' foreign reserves.
(Reporting by Lesley Wroughton; Editing by Walker Simon)