Policy Papers
2021
May 25, 2021
Guidance Note On Implementing The Debt Limits Policy In Fund Supported Programs
Description: The Debt Limits Policy (DLP) establishes the framework for using quantitative conditionality to address debt vulnerabilities in IMF-supported programs. In October 2020, the Executive Board approved reforms to the DLP which will enter into effect on June 30, 2021. The risk-based approach to setting debt conditionality informed by Debt Sustainability Analyses under the previous DLP approved in 2014 is maintained. The reforms aim to provide countries with more financing flexibility in practice while still adequately containing debt vulnerabilities through appropriate safeguards. This note provides operational and technical guidance related to the implementation of the DLP, including the operationalization of the approved reforms. In particular, it outlines the core principles underpinning the DLP, including when debt conditionality in IMF-supported programs is warranted and how to account for country-specific circumstances in the design of debt limits. The note also describes the process of setting and implementing debt conditionality, including: (i) identifying debt vulnerabilities to inform the focus of debt conditionality; (ii) designing debt conditionality; and (iii) implementing debt conditionality through the review cycle. The Guidance Note is intended for use by both IMF staff and country officials. In this regard, in addition to the guidance presented in the main body, the note also contains several annexes that cover definitional, technical, and operational issues arising in the determination and implementation of public debt limits.
May 19, 2021
Post Program Monitoring During The Pandemic: Proposal For Temporary Streamlining Of Procedures And Renaming Of The Policy
Description: The increase in Fund lending in the aftermath of the Covid-19 pandemic, including emergency financing, has led to a record number of requests for financing last year, and to an unprecedented amount of credit outstanding. This underscores the need for appropriate safeguards to the Fund’s balance sheet. Post Program Monitoring (PPM) is one such safeguard, which provides a framework for deeper and closer engagement with members that have substantial outstanding Fund credit but are not in a program relationship.
May 19, 2021
Policy Coordination Instrument—Operational Guidance Note
Description: This note—issued in May 2021 and since superseded by an updated note—provided general guidance on the use of the Policy Coordination Instrument (PCI) through March 2024 (and is being maintained here for archival purposes). Please refer to the updated note for current guidance, which refines operational practices based on recent experience and reflects the policy changes approved by the Board in October 2023.
May 18, 2021
2021 Comprehensive Surveillance Review— Background Paper on The Surveillance Priority Confronting Risks and Uncertainties
Description: The coverage of risks has become more systematic since the Global Financial Crisis (GFC): staff reports now regularly identify major risks and provide an assessment of their likelihood and economic impact, summarized in Risk Assessment Matrices (RAM). But still limited attention is paid to the range of possible outcomes. Also, risk identification is useful only so much as to inform policy design to preemptively respond to relevant risks and/or better prepare for them. In this regard, policy recommendations in surveillance could be richer in considering various risk management approaches. To this end, progress is needed on two dimensions: • Increasing emphasis on the range of potential outcomes to improve policy design. • Encouraging more proactive policy advice on how to manage risks. Efforts should continue to leverage internal and external resources to support risk analysis and advice in surveillance.
May 18, 2021
2021 Comprehensive Surveillance Review— Modalities for Modernizing Surveillance
Description: Modern Fund surveillance needs to be more targeted, topical and timely, better interconnected and better informed. Modernizing surveillance will likely require additional resources, although estimates are highly uncertain at this stage. The paper offers a tentative costing of new proposals with significant budgetary implications. Other proposals could rely on optimizing processes, while others are underway and funded separately; the resource implications of yet others are being picked up in context of other workstreams. Estimates do not include short-term transition costs or pressures on support services and are subject to a significant degree of uncertainty. A flexible approach to implementing the new modalities, characterized by experimentation and learning-by- doing—a “sandbox” for new modalities—is proposed.
May 18, 2021
2021 Comprehensive Surveillance Review— Background Paper on The Surveillance Priority Ensuring Economic Sustainability
Description: Ensuring economic sustainability is key to achieving the IMF’s surveillance mandate of maintaining present and prospective balance of payments and domestic stability, assuring orderly exchange arrangements, and promoting a stable system of exchange rates. A good understanding of issues related to economic sustainability is thus essential for the IMF to provide effective surveillance and policy advice, while it requires a broad perspective and a long time horizon. With respect to the IMF’s surveillance mandate, the principle of macro-criticality, which guides the IMF’s engagement with its members, is sufficiently flexible and broad, allowing the IMF to cover issues related to economic sustainability. At the same time, given the wide range of issues that are related to economic sustainability, IMF surveillance needs to be selective and focused, with the choice of issues made on a case-by-case basis, considering country circumstances. It also needs to leverage the expertise of other institutions when necessary. The IMF and other institutions have advanced work to enhance analytical frameworks and indicators related to economic sustainability, and this should continue.
May 18, 2021
2021 Comprehensive Surveillance Review— Background Paper on Systemic Risk and Macroprudential Policy Advice in Article IV Consultations
Description: This paper assesses progress made in deepening and integrating systemic risk analysis and macroprudential policy advice in Article IV consultations following up on the findings of the IEO evaluation. The assessment informs the Comprehensive Surveillance Review and the FSAP Review in their recommendations to strengthen these areas in Article IV consultations. The findings point to notable improvements made since the launch of the macrofinancial mainstreaming initiative, particularly in staff reports for advanced economies and in covering bank and credit-related risks.
May 18, 2021
2021 Comprehensive Surveillance Review— Background Paper on Integrating Climate Change into Article IV Consultations
Description: While the IMF has been involved in the climate debate since at least 2008, a systematic account of how to integrate climate change into surveillance has been lacking to date. This paper seeks to fill the gap. It argues that domestic policy challenges related to climate change—such as adaptation efforts for climate vulnerable countries, or policies to deliver a country’s Nationally Determined Contribution under the Paris climate accord—are covered by the IMF’s bilateral surveillance mandate and therefore valid topics for Article IV consultations wherever these challenges cross the threshold of macro-criticality. Climate change mitigation is a global policy challenge and therefore falls under multilateral surveillance. The paper proposes a pragmatic approach that focusses especially on the mitigation efforts of the 20 largest emitters of greenhouse gases.
May 18, 2021
2021 Comprehensive Surveillance Review— Background Paper on Scenario Planning
Description: The scenario planning exercises help to draw out the surveillance priorities and stress- test the robustness of those priorities to uncertainties in the decade ahead. To inform the two priorities on confronting risks and uncertainties and mitigating spillovers, the scenarios illustrate how different shocks and alternative policy approaches carry their own risks and can have both positive and negative spillovers. The scenarios also illustrate some of the complex economic and non-economic factors that feed into the priority on economic sustainability and demonstrate how resource constraints and changing economic structures underpin the need for a unified policy approach.
May 18, 2021
2021 Comprehensive Surveillance Review— Background Paper on Traction
Description: This paper presents traction as a multidimensional concept and discusses a comprehensive and complementary set of approaches to attempt to measure it based on the Fund’s value added to policy dialogue and formulation and public debate in member countries.