Policy Papers
2010
October 7, 2010
Statement by the Managing Director to the International Monetary and Financial Committee on the Global Economy and Financial Markets
Description: The recovery remains fragile and uneven. In many advanced economies, activity is still sluggish and unemployment high, while legacy problems in the financial system remain unresolved. Activity is more robust in many emerging and developing economies. However, their prospects also depend on a healthy, broad-based recovery among the advanced economies, owing to deep real and financial linkages. The key policy challenge is to effect a smooth transition from public- to private-sector-led growth in many advanced economies, and from external to domestically driven growth in key emerging economies. While short-term macroeconomic policies are broadly appropriate, completing the two rebalancing acts will require tackling the medium-term fiscal, financial, and structural challenges raised by the crisis. Without such reforms, growth could sputter, with grave economic and social consequences.
October 7, 2010
Progress Report on the Activities of the Independent Evaluation Office
Description:
Since its last report, the Independent Evaluation Office (IEO) has advanced work on the two current evaluations and selected topics for three new evaluations.
The evaluations of Research at the IMF: Relevance and Utilization and IMF Performance in the Run-up to the Current Financial and Economic Crisis are in the concluding stages. IEO expects to send these evaluations to the Executive Board before year-end.
October 7, 2010
Executive Board Report to the IMFC on Quota and Governance Reforms
Description: Since the IMFC last met in April, the Executive Board has taken up the full range of quota and other governance reforms. While there has been some movement on the many complex issues, discussions have been inconclusive, and no proposal has been able to command broad support. The concluding remarks that sum up these meetings lay out the various positions taken by members of the Board (attached). The debate is continuing, and we hope to make progress on finding the possible elements of a compromise acceptable to the membership.
October 6, 2010
Statement by the Managing Director to the International Monetary and Financial Committee on the Fund’s Policy Agenda
Description: Although the global recovery continues to move ahead, it remains fragile and uneven, with continued high unemployment. Many countries are emerging from the crisis with high debt burdens, low growth, and still fragile financial sectors. At the same time, economic activity in many emerging market countries has picked up, attracting large capital inflows that challenge economic policy. Important steps have been taken to make financial sectors safer around the world, but the unfinished agenda is still substantial, particularly for cross-border finance and macro-prudential regulation. All this suggests serious vulnerabilities and challenges remain, requiring continued policy cooperation and collaboration.
October 6, 2010
Guidance Note for Staff on Undertaking Targeted (Risk-Based) Reports on the Observance of Standards and Codes (ROSCs) in Financial Regulation and Supervision
Description: In September 2009, the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and the World Bank (WB) Boards approved changes to the Financial Sector Assessment Program (FSAP) to (i) make it more flexible and better-aligned with country needs as well as IMF and WB financial sector priorities and core responsibilities; (ii) enhance the quality, candor, and comparability of assessments; and (iii) better-integrate FSAP analysis into the institutions’ evolving mandates.
October 6, 2010
Executive Board Progress Report to the IMFC on the Fund's Mandate
Description:
This paper responds to the IMFC call to review, in light of the crisis, the Fund’s mandate over macroeconomic and financial sector policies bearing on global stability.
The crisis exposed weaknesses in economic oversight—national, regional, and global—prior to the crisis, prompting major institutional innovations to uncover risks and meet large and diverse financing needs. Despite progress, it still needs to be asked if the mandate in the Fund’s Articles is up to the challenges ahead. The Board’s deliberations, which are far from complete, have prompted it to emphasize practical steps to deliver on the Fund’s broad stability mandate, with any need to amend the Articles reconsidered in light of experience. The effectiveness of these steps will also depend on quota and governance reform, as confidence in the Fund as an impartial overseer of global stability and lender of last resort rests on its legitimacy.
October 5, 2010
Emerging from the Global Crisis - Macroeconomic Challenges Facing Low-Income Countries
Description: While the impact of the global crisis has been severe, real per capita GDP growth stayed positive in two-thirds of low-income countries (LICs), unlike in previous global downturns, and in contrast to richer countries. The crisis affected LICs not so much through the terms of trade or global interest rates, but rather through a sharp contraction in export demand, foreign direct investment, and remittances (oil exporters also suffered from a sharp fall in oil prices). LICs saw the sharpest decline in their economic growth rate over the last four decades. However, this slowdown followed a period of strong expansion, and real per capita GDP growth has generally held up in LICs, remaining well above growth in richer countries.
October 5, 2010
Fourteenth General Review of Quotas - Possible Elements of a Compromise
Description: The IMFC in its April 2010 Communiqué pledged to complete the 14th Quota Review before January 2011 in line with the parameters agreed in Istanbul. The Committee of the Whole (COW) has since continued its work aimed at developing proposals that could command broad support. At its most recent meeting in September, there was a shared commitment to reaching an agreement within the agreed timetable but views remained divided on many issues. To facilitate progress towards the agreed goal, this paper suggests possible elements that could help form the basis for an agreement. These elements seek to build on the discussions to date and balance the diverse views that have been expressed. Inevitably, they will not fully meet the preferences or priorities of any individual member, and difficult compromises will be required from all sides if an agreement is to be reached.
October 4, 2010
Understanding Financial Interconnectedness
Description: This paper seeks to advance our understanding of global financial interconnectedness by (i) mapping aspects of the architecture of global finance and (ii) investigating critical fault lines related to interconnectedness along which systemic risks were built up and shocks transmitted in the crisis. It thus takes initial steps toward operationalizing enhanced financial sector and macro-financial surveillance called for by the IMF’s Executive Board and by experts such as de Larosiere et al. (2009). Getting a better handle on interconnectedness would strengthen the Fund‘s ability, together with the Financial Stability Board, to track systemic risk concentrations. It would also inform spillover and vulnerability analyses, and sharpen bilateral and multilateral surveillance.
October 1, 2010
Reference Note on Trade Policy, Preferential Trade Agreements, and WTO Consistency
Description: This Reference Note introduces guidance on preferential trade agreements (PTAs). In so doing, it responds to the request by the Executive Board in the context of the Independent Evaluation Office (IEO) Evaluation of IMF Involvement in Trade Policy Issues. Section II provides context for the Fund’s work on trade policy, drawing upon the 2009 IEO Evaluation, the 2005 Review of Fund Work on Trade, and the discussion of the Executive Board on these occasions. Section III reflects issues presented in Preferential Trade Agreements—Issues for the Fund, discussed at an informal Board seminar in December 2006.