## ppea2020020

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---

### THE MANAGING DIRECTOR’S Spring Meetings Exceptional Times Exceptional Action 2020 — Global crisis overview
- The COVID-19 health crisis has rapidly developed into an economic and financial crisis, bringing large parts of the world economy to a sudden stop and causing a deep recession.
- Binding constraints on demand and supply are permeating across countries, contributing to sharp price declines in financial and commodity markets.
- Emerging market and low-income countries face especially grave challenges due to:
  - more limited health care capacity,
  - insufficient medical supplies,
  - large financing needs,
  - increasing debt burdens.
- The Fund expects a partial recovery next year, but the outlook will remain highly uncertain for some time to come.

### Policy response priorities and recommendations
- Public health measures
  - Slow the spread of the virus and reduce pressure on health systems through enhanced monitoring, containment measures, and mobilization of resources for medical services, supply chains, and production.
  - International coordinated effort is required; defeating the pandemic domestically and globally is essential.
- Fiscal policy
  - Fiscal policy must aim to increase health spending to fight the virus.
  - Targeted and sizable fiscal support is particularly critical to help the most-affected people and firms, including those in hard-to-reach informal sectors.
  - Ensure efficient and equitable use of public resources to avoid widespread bankruptcies and layoffs and to end the crisis faster at lower cost.
- Monetary and financial policy
  - Central banks must provide ample liquidity and offset tightening of overall financial conditions to support demand and confidence and help stem a solvency crisis.
  - Financial authorities should preserve financial stability and sound banking systems, drawing on buffers and the flexibility built into regulatory frameworks to support credit to people and firms.
- International cooperation
  - Scale up policies and step up efforts to help the most vulnerable and low-income countries by providing enhanced funding and debt service relief, ensuring scarce resources are dedicated to disease prevention and treatment and mitigating the economic impact.
  - Avoid trade restrictions, particularly on medical supplies, and address impairment to global supply chains.
  - Consider financing from all layers of the global financial safety net to support countries with elevated financing needs, including options to address foreign exchange shortages in emerging markets.
  - As the global economy stabilizes, coordinated stimulus may be needed to boost demand and restore growth.

### IMF operational response and lending toolkit enhancements
- The Fund is using its resources to the fullest extent in close collaboration with international partners to:
  - assess macroeconomic implications of the outbreak,
  - provide policy advice to stabilize economies,
  - facilitate information sharing (Policy Tracker),
  - tailor capacity development to crisis circumstances,
  - step up collaboration at multilateral, regional, and country levels in lockstep with the World Bank and other IFIs.
- Key measures taken to enhance lending capacity and instruments:
  - Provide financing for members’ urgent balance-of-payments needs in an accelerated way, including through rapid-disbursing lending vehicles—the Rapid Credit Facility (RCF) and the Rapid Financing Instrument (RFI)—and by augmenting existing arrangements.
  - The Executive Board decided to double annual access limits for the RCF and RFI to 100 percent of quota for the duration of the pandemic.
  - Working on a short-term liquidity line to provide predictable and renewable access to Fund resources to members with very strong policies and exploring additional tools that would meet financing needs, including those that involve Special Drawing Rights.
  - The Catastrophe Containment and Relief Trust has been reformed to provide debt service relief to the poorest members and funds are being raised to this end so members can invest in crisis response rather than repay the Fund.
  - Raising funds for additional lending resources through the Poverty Reduction and Growth Trust (PRGT) accompanies support for a time-bound suspension of debt service payments by bilateral official creditors for poorest members that request forbearance, with encouragement for private sector creditors to participate on comparable terms.

### Debt, resilience, and medium-term priorities
- The crisis will add to already-high public debt levels in many countries and could make them more persistent, intensifying debt vulnerabilities.
- The Fund will assist countries in resolving unsustainable debt situations and retain focus on containing debt vulnerabilities, including facilitating debt service relief for the poorest members.
- Continued actions:
  - Enhance debt transparency and build capacity to manage debt jointly with the World Bank.
  - Examine recent challenges in sovereign debt resolution and complete reviews of the debt sustainability framework for market access countries and the debt limits policy.
  - Help members rebuild fiscal space within a sound medium-term fiscal framework as recovery starts, including through revenue mobilization and public financial management reforms.
  - Support efforts to strengthen governance, anticorruption, and anti–money laundering and combating the financing of terrorism frameworks.

### Work agenda, surveillance, and capacity development
- Immediate priorities
  - Crisis-related work to provide policy advice, financing, and capacity development will be afforded priority; many other work streams will be delayed to make space for crisis response.
  - The Fund will aim to advance selected high-priority work to help lay the conditions for a fast and strong recovery toward more resilient and inclusive growth.
- Surveillance and policy frameworks
  - Continue work on the Integrated Policy Framework to help members navigate interactions among monetary, exchange rate, macroprudential, and capital flow management policies amid volatile global capital flows.
  - Deepen analysis of implications of lower-for-longer interest rates.
  - Social spending is central to protecting vulnerable populations and promoting inclusive growth; the Fund will help countries calibrate social policies based on its framework for engagement on social spending.
- Climate, fintech, and data
  - Continue integrating climate change issues into surveillance and capacity development, promote climate mitigation, encourage climate risk disclosure standards for the financial sector, and strengthen policy advice for climate-related disasters in LICs and small states.
  - Examine challenges and opportunities presented by fintech and digital currencies for financial inclusion, monetary policy implementation, and the international monetary system, and advance work on implications of data proliferation for the global economy and policy coordination.
- Operations and modernization
  - Provide remote capacity development where feasible, prioritizing countries hit hardest by the crisis.
  - Continue work on the Comprehensive Surveillance Review and the Review of the Financial Sector Assessment Program when crisis pressures subside.
  - Maintain full implementation of the package on Fund resources and governance reform; ensure a strong, quota-based, and adequately resourced Fund remains at the center of the global financial safety net.
  - Board of Governors concluded the 15th General Review of Quotas (GRQ) with no increase in quotas but provided guidance for the 16th GRQ to continue governance reform.
  - Executive Board decisions on doubling the New Arrangements to Borrow (NAB) and a new round of Bilateral Borrowing Agreements (BBAs) beyond 2020; progress toward making the NAB and the new round of BBAs effective is welcomed and further swift action by creditors is encouraged.
  - Leverage new technologies in crisis response, upgrade internal systems and processes, increase workforce diversity, strengthen enterprise risk management, and develop a broader strategy to reduce the Fund’s climate footprint.

### Key statistics and IMF financial position
- The Fund’s lending capacity: US$1 trillion.
- Catastrophe Containment and Relief Trust: US$1.4 billion to be raised.
- TOTAL LENDING COMMITMENTS = SDR 148 BILLION.
- CURRENT GRA and PRGT arrangements and commitments (as of end‑March 2020, in billions of SDRs):
  - Total Current Programs: 110.9
  - o/w: Undrawn Balance (A): 73.2
  - Total Outstanding Credit (B): 42.0
  - Members without current arrangements — Total Outstanding Credit (C): 23.7
  - TOTAL GRA COMMITMENTS (A)+(B)+(C): 138.9
  - PRGT Total Current Programs: 4.3
  - o/w: Undrawn Balance (D): 2.3
  - Total Outstanding Credit (E): 3.8
  - Members without current arrangements — Total Outstanding Credit (F): 3.2
  - TOTAL PRGT COMMITMENTS (D)+(E)+(F): 9.3
- Operational and capacity development metrics:
  - 3,137 technical assistance visits.
  - 16,930 officials trained (2019 calendar year).
  - 193 economies under surveillance.
  - 90 countries receiving CD.
  - 140 engagement with policy responses (live tracker).
  - 2019 Article IV consultations: 140.
- Members with current arrangements (selected examples shown in source):
  - Stand-By Arrangement — Argentina: Current Program Size 40.71; Outstanding Credit 31.91
  - Extended Fund Facility — Pakistan: Current Program Size 4.27; Outstanding Credit 4.72
  - Flexible Credit Line — Colombia: Current Program Size 7.85; Mexico: Current Program Size 44.56
  - PRGT Extended Credit Facility examples — Ethiopia: Current Program Size 1.20; Outstanding Credit 0.15

### Key IMF activities since the Fall 2019 Global Policy Agenda
- Analyzed fiscal, central bank, and financial sector policies in response to COVID-19.
- Discussed a new approach for fiscal policies to reinvigorate growth and institutional frameworks for state-owned enterprises.
- Advanced work on the Integrated Policy Framework.
- Incorporated machine-learning models to more robustly identify vulnerable countries.
- Studied the role of cyclical policies in an era of low rates and high debt in advanced economies.
- Examined channels through which low or negative interest rates affect financial institutions.
- Analyzed the role of macroprudential policies in dampening global financial shocks in emerging markets.
- Advanced work on a new Central Bank Transparency Code and emerging competition policy issues.
- Delivered studies on gender-responsive fiscal policy and relationships between inequality and financial depth, inclusion, and stability.
- Presented external sector assessments for countries not covered by the External Sector Report.
- Analyzed the evolution of debt vulnerabilities in lower-income countries, jointly with the World Bank.

### THE MANAGING DIRECTOR’S GLOBAL POLICY AGENDA — Economic and Financial Research; Global Solutions
- Presented a report on macroeconomic developments and prospects in low-income developing countries.
- Discussed the implementation of measures to strengthen Fund engagement in fragile and conflict-affected states.
- Investigated how climate-change-related risks are priced into financial assets.
- Initiated assessment of progress in implementing the framework for enhanced Fund engagement on governance.
- Advanced analysis of cross-border implications of digital currencies.
- Initiated a stocktake on the Fund’s work on illicit and tax-avoiding financial flows.
- Launched the update of the international statistical standards and organized the 7th IMF Statistical Forum: “Measuring the Informal Economy."
- Delivered notes to the G20 on surveillance, collateralized sovereign lending, public debt data coverage, the Data Gaps Initiative, and developments in local currency bond markets in EMs.
- Advanced work on a G20 note on enhancing access to opportunities.
- Advanced work on the 2020 Comprehensive Surveillance Review and the 2020 Review of the Financial Sector Assessment Program (the latter coordinated with the World Bank).
- Reviewed eligibility to use Fund facilities for concessional financing.
- Engaged the Executive Board on policy safeguards for PRGT-eligible countries seeking high-level access to Fund resources.
- Presented proposals for toolkit reforms and broader policy measures in response to COVID-19.
- Reformed the Catastrophe Containment and Relief Trust and engaged in fundraising.
- Advanced work on the reviews of the debt sustainability analysis for market access countries and the debt limits policy.
- Engaged on CD priorities and the implementation of the CD Strategy Review.

### IMF Policies; Governance and Internal Support
- Advanced work on securing the package of IMF resource and governance reform; in particular:
  - delivered a report to the Board of Governors on the completion of the 15th General Review of Quotas and guidance on the 16th General Review of Quotas
  - engaged on the approval of a doubling of the New Arrangements to Borrow and on a new framework for maintaining access to Bilateral Borrowing beyond 2020.
- Completed the Comprehensive Compensation and Benefits Review.
- Delivered the 2019 diversity and inclusion report.
- Discussed the management implementation plans (MIPs) in response to IEO recommendations on the Fund advice on unconventional monetary policy and on the IMF’s financial surveillance.
- Presented the Tenth Periodic Monitoring Report on the Status of MIPs in Response to Board-Endorsed IEO Recommendations and the Categorization of Open Actions in MIPs.
- Continued to implement a multiproject modernization agenda to upgrade internal systems and processes and adopt digital tools.
- Delivered the 2019 risk report.

*Source: ppea2020020 - Section 1 and Section 2 (IMF publication Exceptional Times—Exceptional Action Spring Meetings 2020).*

### Section 1

### THE MANAGING DIRECTOR’S Spring Meetings Exceptional Times Exceptional Action 2020

### Global crisis overview
- The COVID-19 health crisis has rapidly developed into an economic and financial crisis, bringing large parts of the world economy to a sudden stop and causing a deep recession.
- Binding constraints on demand and supply are permeating across countries, contributing to sharp price declines in financial and commodity markets.
- Emerging market and low-income countries face especially grave challenges due to:
  - more limited health care capacity,
  - insufficient medical supplies,
  - large financing needs,
  - increasing debt burdens.
- The Fund expects a partial recovery next year, but the outlook will remain highly uncertain for some time to come.

### Policy response priorities and recommendations
- Public health measures
  - Slow the spread of the virus and reduce pressure on health systems through enhanced monitoring, containment measures, and mobilization of resources for medical services, supply chains, and production.
  - International coordinated effort is required; defeating the pandemic domestically and globally is essential.
- Fiscal policy
  - Fiscal policy must aim to increase health spending to fight the virus.
  - Targeted and sizable fiscal support is particularly critical to help the most-affected people and firms, including those in hard-to-reach informal sectors.
  - Ensure efficient and equitable use of public resources to avoid widespread bankruptcies and layoffs and to end the crisis faster at lower cost.
- Monetary and financial policy
  - Central banks must provide ample liquidity and offset tightening of overall financial conditions to support demand and confidence and help stem a solvency crisis.
  - Financial authorities should preserve financial stability and sound banking systems, drawing on buffers and the flexibility built into regulatory frameworks to support credit to people and firms.
- International cooperation
  - Scale up policies and step up efforts to help the most vulnerable and low-income countries by providing enhanced funding and debt service relief, ensuring scarce resources are dedicated to disease prevention and treatment and mitigating the economic impact.
  - Avoid trade restrictions, particularly on medical supplies, and address impairment to global supply chains.
  - Consider financing from all layers of the global financial safety net to support countries with elevated financing needs, including options to address foreign exchange shortages in emerging markets.
  - As the global economy stabilizes, coordinated stimulus may be needed to boost demand and restore growth.

### IMF operational response and lending toolkit enhancements
- The Fund is using its resources to the fullest extent in close collaboration with international partners to:
  - assess macroeconomic implications of the outbreak,
  - provide policy advice to stabilize economies,
  - facilitate information sharing (Policy Tracker),
  - tailor capacity development to crisis circumstances,
  - step up collaboration at multilateral, regional, and country levels in lockstep with the World Bank and other IFIs.
- Key measures taken to enhance lending capacity and instruments:
  - The Fund is focused on providing financing for members’ urgent balance-of-payments needs in an accelerated way, including through rapid-disbursing lending vehicles—the Rapid Credit Facility (RCF) and the Rapid Financing Instrument (RFI)—and by augmenting existing arrangements.
  - The Executive Board decided to double annual access limits for the RCF and RFI to 100 percent of quota for the duration of the pandemic.
  - The Fund is working on a short-term liquidity line to provide predictable and renewable access to Fund resources to members with very strong policies and is exploring additional tools that would meet financing needs, including those that involve Special Drawing Rights.
  - The Catastrophe Containment and Relief Trust has been reformed to provide debt service relief to the poorest members and funds are being raised to this end so members can invest in crisis response rather than repay the Fund.
  - Raising funds for additional lending resources through the Poverty Reduction and Growth Trust (PRGT) accompanies support for a time-bound suspension of debt service payments by bilateral official creditors for poorest members that request forbearance, with encouragement for private sector creditors to participate on comparable terms.

### Debt, resilience, and medium-term priorities
- The crisis will add to already-high public debt levels in many countries and could make them more persistent, intensifying debt vulnerabilities.
- The Fund will assist countries in resolving unsustainable debt situations and retain focus on containing debt vulnerabilities, including facilitating debt service relief for the poorest members.
- Continued actions:
  - Enhance debt transparency and build capacity to manage debt jointly with the World Bank.
  - Examine recent challenges in sovereign debt resolution and complete reviews of the debt sustainability framework for market access countries and the debt limits policy.
  - Help members rebuild fiscal space within a sound medium-term fiscal framework as recovery starts, including through revenue mobilization and public financial management reforms.
  - Support efforts to strengthen governance, anticorruption, and anti–money laundering and combating the financing of terrorism frameworks.

### Work agenda, surveillance, and capacity development
- Immediate priorities
  - Crisis-related work to provide policy advice, financing, and capacity development will be afforded priority; many other work streams will be delayed to make space for crisis response.
  - The Fund will aim to advance selected high-priority work to help lay the conditions for a fast and strong recovery toward more resilient and inclusive growth.
- Surveillance and policy frameworks
  - Continue work on the Integrated Policy Framework to help members navigate interactions among monetary, exchange rate, macroprudential, and capital flow management policies amid volatile global capital flows.
  - Deepen analysis of implications of lower-for-longer interest rates.
  - Social spending is central to protecting vulnerable populations and promoting inclusive growth; the Fund will help countries calibrate social policies based on its framework for engagement on social spending.
- Climate, fintech, and data
  - Continue integrating climate change issues into surveillance and capacity development, promote climate mitigation, encourage climate risk disclosure standards for the financial sector, and strengthen policy advice for climate-related disasters in LICs and small states.
  - Examine challenges and opportunities presented by fintech and digital currencies for financial inclusion, monetary policy implementation, and the international monetary system, and advance work on implications of data proliferation for the global economy and policy coordination.
- Operations and modernization
  - Provide remote capacity development where feasible, prioritizing countries hit hardest by the crisis.
  - Continue work on the Comprehensive Surveillance Review and the Review of the Financial Sector Assessment Program when crisis pressures subside.
  - Maintain full implementation of the package on Fund resources and governance reform; ensure a strong, quota-based, and adequately resourced Fund remains at the center of the global financial safety net.
  - Board of Governors concluded the 15th General Review of Quotas (GRQ) with no increase in quotas but provided guidance for the 16th GRQ to continue governance reform.
  - Executive Board decisions on doubling the New Arrangements to Borrow (NAB) and a new round of Bilateral Borrowing Agreements (BBAs) beyond 2020; progress toward making the NAB and the new round of BBAs effective is welcomed and further swift action by creditors is encouraged.
  - Leverage new technologies in crisis response, upgrade internal systems and processes, increase workforce diversity, strengthen enterprise risk management, and develop a broader strategy to reduce the Fund’s climate footprint.

### Key statistics and IMF financial position (as presented)
- The Fund’s lending capacity: US$1 trillion.
- Catastrophe Containment and Relief Trust: US$1.4 billion to be raised.
- TOTAL LENDING COMMITMENTS = SDR 148 BILLION.
- CURRENT GRA and PRGT arrangements and commitments (as of end‑March 2020, in billions of SDRs):
  - Total Current Programs: 110.9
  - o/w: Undrawn Balance (A): 73.2
  - Total Outstanding Credit (B): 42.0
  - Members without current arrangements — Total Outstanding Credit (C): 23.7
  - TOTAL GRA COMMITMENTS (A)+(B)+(C): 138.9
  - PRGT Total Current Programs: 4.3
  - o/w: Undrawn Balance (D): 2.3
  - Total Outstanding Credit (E): 3.8
  - Members without current arrangements — Total Outstanding Credit (F): 3.2
  - TOTAL PRGT COMMITMENTS (D)+(E)+(F): 9.3
- Operational and capacity development metrics (note: stated as of specific dates):
  - 3,137 technical assistance visits (note context: highlighted metric).
  - 16,930 officials trained (2019 calendar year).
  - 193 economies under surveillance.
  - 90 countries receiving CD.
  - 140 engagement with policy responses (live tracker).
  - 2019 Article IV consultations: 140 (graphic context indicates 2019 Article IV consultations = 140).
- Members with current arrangements (examples and figures shown under GRA and PRGT sections; selected entries):
  - Stand-By Arrangement — Argentina: Current Program Size 40.71; Outstanding Credit 31.91
  - Extended Fund Facility — Pakistan: Current Program Size 4.27; Outstanding Credit 4.72
  - Flexible Credit Line — Colombia: Current Program Size 7.85; Mexico: Current Program Size 44.56
  - PRGT Extended Credit Facility examples — Ethiopia: Current Program Size 1.20; Outstanding Credit 0.15
- Note: Numbers are presented in the document with original precision and context; detailed country-level tables and additional figures are contained in the source pages.

### Key IMF activities since the Fall 2019 Global Policy Agenda
- Analyzed fiscal, central bank, and financial sector policies in response to COVID-19.
- Discussed a new approach for fiscal policies to reinvigorate growth and institutional frameworks for state-owned enterprises.
- Advanced work on the Integrated Policy Framework.
- Incorporated machine-learning models to more robustly identify vulnerable countries.
- Studied the role of cyclical policies in an era of low rates and high debt in advanced economies.
- Examined channels through which low or negative interest rates affect financial institutions.
- Analyzed the role of macroprudential policies in dampening global financial shocks in emerging markets.
- Advanced work on a new Central Bank Transparency Code and emerging competition policy issues.
- Delivered studies on gender-responsive fiscal policy and relationships between inequality and financial depth, inclusion, and stability.
- Presented external sector assessments for countries not covered by the External Sector Report.
- Analyzed the evolution of debt vulnerabilities in lower-income countries, jointly with the World Bank.

*Source: ppea2020020 - Section 1 (IMF publication Exceptional Times—Exceptional Action Spring Meetings 2020).*

### Section 2

### THE MANAGING DIRECTOR’S GLOBAL POLICY AGENDA

### Economic and Financial Research; Global Solutions
- Presented a report on macroeconomic developments and prospects in low-income developing countries.
- Discussed the implementation of measures to strengthen Fund engagement in fragile and conflict-affected states.
- Investigated how climate-change-related risks are priced into financial assets.
- Initiated assessment of progress in implementing the framework for enhanced Fund engagement on governance.
- Advanced analysis of cross-border implications of digital currencies.
- Initiated a stocktake on the Fund’s work on illicit and tax-avoiding financial flows.
- Launched the update of the international statistical standards and organized the 7th IMF Statistical Forum: “Measuring the Informal Economy."
- Delivered notes to the G20 on surveillance, collateralized sovereign lending, public debt data coverage, the Data Gaps Initiative, and developments in local currency bond markets in EMs.
- Advanced work on a G20 note on enhancing access to opportunities.
- Advanced work on the 2020 Comprehensive Surveillance Review and the 2020 Review of the Financial Sector Assessment Program (the latter coordinated with the World Bank).
- Reviewed eligibility to use Fund facilities for concessional financing.
- Engaged the Executive Board on policy safeguards for PRGT-eligible countries seeking high-level access to Fund resources.
- Presented proposals for toolkit reforms and broader policy measures in response to COVID-19.
- Reformed the Catastrophe Containment and Relief Trust and engaged in fundraising.
- Advanced work on the reviews of the debt sustainability analysis for market access countries and the debt limits policy.
- Engaged on CD priorities and the implementation of the CD Strategy Review.

### IMF Policies; Governance and Internal Support
- Advanced work on securing the package of IMF resource and governance reform; in particular:
  - delivered a report to the Board of Governors on the completion of the 15th General Review of Quotas and guidance on the 16th General Review of Quotas
  - engaged on the approval of a doubling of the New Arrangements to Borrow and on a new framework for maintaining access to Bilateral Borrowing beyond 2020.
- Completed the Comprehensive Compensation and Benefits Review.
- Delivered the 2019 diversity and inclusion report.
- Discussed the management implementation plans (MIPs) in response to IEO recommendations on the Fund advice on unconventional monetary policy and on the IMF’s financial surveillance.
- Presented the Tenth Periodic Monitoring Report on the Status of MIPs in Response to Board-Endorsed IEO Recommendations and the Categorization of Open Actions in MIPs.
- Continued to implement a multiproject modernization agenda to upgrade internal systems and processes and adopt digital tools.
- Delivered the 2019 risk report.

*Source: ppea2020020 - Section 2*

---


_Source: https://www.imf.org/-/media/files/publications/pp/2020/english/ppea2020020.pdf_