International Monetary Fund

IMF Consultations

Consultation on IMF Natural Resources Work

Last Updated: July 28, 2017

Note:

The IMF thanks all NGOs, academia, think tanks, private sector, governments and individuals who have provided written comments during the IMF Natural Resources work on-line consultation period. The on-line process has officially ended by the end of April, 2012. Please find below the comments submitted on March 17, 2012 – April 27, 2012. If you have any questions, please send an e-mail to IMFconsultation@imf.org.



Background

D

eveloping countries face important economic policy challenges in trying to realize the full development potential of their natural resources and to avoid the pitfalls that have plagued resource rich countries in the past. To ensure that natural resources provide an opportunity to promote economic and social development, build human capital, and close infrastructure gaps, several economic policy challenges must be addressed. These policy challenges extend to areas such as resource taxation, fiscal policy design, sustainability of external balances, impact of resource booms on exchange rates, and complex linkages between resource and non-resource sectors.

For instance, while associated fiscal regimes and contracts must balance the country's interests with those of companies charged with finding, developing and extracting the resources, a country's resource-revenue collection process needs to effectively deal with the technical and administrative complexities to ensure that companies pay what is due. In addition, proper macro-fiscal frameworks are needed to manage volatile, uncertain, and exhaustible resource revenue flows in line with development needs and absorption capacity constraints.

The Fund has been involved in these various aspects through policy advice and technical assistance. In this context, and to promote a discussion of these issues and reassess its policy advice, the Fund is working on Taxation of Natural Resource Rents and Natural Resources Wealth Management (Macroeconomic Policy Framework for Resource-rich low-income and lower-middle income countries).

Objective

The overall objective of the public consultation process is to enhance the Fund's current discussions on natural resources. Specifically, the consultation process aims to gather input and feedback from interested stakeholders on these Board papers.

IMF Executive Board papers

The IMF seeks insights on its work on natural resources related issues, through a consultative process. The process will involve IMF staff interaction with academics, private sector, civil society, amongst others. Along with these meetings, the IMF is issuing a call for written comments on the following papers:

Natural Resources Wealth Management

The boom in global commodity prices and new discoveries offer vast opportunities for economic development in many low- and lower-middle income countries (LICs/LMICs). Click for more

Taxation of Natural Resource Rents:

This paper will assess and highlight the untapped potential for taxation of resource revenues as an efficient and equitable source of additional revenue in many developing resource-rich economies—and suggest ways to realize it, with a focus on  better taxation of rents. Click for more.

Procedures

The IMF Civil Society Team will receive the comments and post a summary of the comments received. Senders can request for their comments to be private. Any interested stakeholder can submit their input through the following channels:

When submitting your comments, via fax or email, please include the following information so that your comments are registered: name of sender; company or organization you represent; address; country; phone number; and e-mail address.

Consultation Period

The public consultation process for the IMF papers on Natural Resources Wealth Management and on Natural Resources Rents starts with the release of the concept note of the papers on March 14th and will conclude on April 27th. Comments should be submitted no later than April 27, 2012.

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