## ppea2021052

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**Canonical URL:** [ppea2021052](https://www.imf.org/-/media/files/publications/pp/2021/english/ppea2021052.pdf)

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### Overview
- Date: June 23, 2021; Executive Board Meeting: June 10, 2021.
- Scope: Work Program covering the remainder of FY2022, to gradually resume planning for a year-long horizon and provide timely macroeconomic and financial updates, policy advice on crisis response, and advance priority areas for a resilient recovery.
- Operational continuity: Fund core work on country operations continues, including responding to program requests, continuing focused Article IV consultations, and delivering capacity development (CD).
- Management actions: Staff and management to work with the Board on prioritization and streamlining practices, including greater use of lapse-of-time procedures when criteria are met and exploring innovative, efficiency-enhancing modes of Board engagement.

### A. Securing a Safe Exit from the Crisis
- Context:
  - An unprecedented policy response and rapid progress in vaccinations helped pull the global economy from a deep recession, but the outlook is marked by high uncertainty and great divergence.
  - Objective: achieve a durable exit from the crisis, minimize long-term scarring, and build a more sustainable, resilient, and inclusive global economy.
- Fall flagship reports and updates:
  - World Economic Outlook (WEO): prospects for global growth and inflation; policies to support recovery and equitable gains; measures to enhance resilience, including to mitigate climate change.
  - Global Financial Stability Report (GFSR): focus on challenges faced by emerging and frontier market economies as they emerge from the pandemic; a chapter on climate change assessing risks to the investment fund sector and financial stability and discussing the rise of sustainable finance.
  - Fall Fiscal Monitor (FM): addresses historically high levels of public debt and asks how countries can reinforce the credibility of public finances; outlines considerations for revising fiscal objectives and reforming fiscal frameworks.
  - World Economic and Market Developments Updates: interim information.
  - External Sector Report (ESR) and External Sector Developments and Assessments for the Wider Membership (ESA-WM): multilaterally consistent assessments of external positions and focus on the impact of COVID-19.
  - Early Warning Exercise: Board engagement in October and April.
- Regional and country work:
  - Regional briefings for in-depth analyses and tailored policy recommendations.
  - Briefings on Country Matters for common challenges or select countries with limited/delayed Board engagement.
  - Emerging Markets: Landscape, Prospects and Risks: informs Board on developments, prospects, and risks in emerging and frontier markets.
- Special Drawing Rights (SDRs):
  - Board discussion: Proposal for a General Allocation of SDRs, followed by a draft report to the Board of Governors; allocation to come into effect after Board of Governors’ vote.
  - Preliminary options for a Voluntary Post-Allocation Channeling of SDRs to be discussed.
- Lending policies and instruments:
  - Board discussed Temporary Modifications to Access Limits Under the Large Natural Disaster Window for the Rapid Credit Facility and Rapid Financing Instrument: proposes temporary increases in access limits of the RFI/RCF large natural disaster windows through end-2021 to align with other temporary changes under emergency financing instruments.
  - Board to discuss Vaccine Financing.
  - Informal session: Floating Tranches: Possible Applications in Fund-Supported Programs.
  - Review of Temporary Access Limit Increases: on temporary increase in PRGT and GRA annual access limits and access limits under the RCF and RFI before the increases expire at end-2021.
  - Review of the Lending into Arrears Policies: take stock of application including the good faith criterion; discuss the Fund’s role in pre-default restructurings; review the official/private perimeter.
  - Review of Concessional Financing and Policies: expected Board conclusion to ensure adequate support to low-income countries.
- Debt agenda:
  - Consideration: Catastrophe Containment and Relief Trust (CCRT)—Fourth Tranche of Debt Service Relief in the Context of the COVID-19 Pandemic if additional grants are secured.
  - Updates: Debt Service Suspension Initiative (DSSI) Fiscal Monitoring; Implementation and Extension of the G20 DSSI and Common Framework; Multipronged Approach for Addressing Debt Vulnerabilities.
  - Discussions/briefs: Issues in Restructuring of Sovereign Domestic Debt; A New Debt Sustainability Tool Based on the IMF’S Sovereign Risk and Debt Sustainability Framework; Update to the Contractual Approach for Sovereign Debt Restructuring; Debt Transparency.
- Surveillance and data:
  - Review of Data Provision to the Fund for Surveillance Purposes to continue enhancing surveillance framework following CSR and FSAP Review conclusions.
  - Updates on implementation of CSR and FSAP review recommendations in future semiannual Work Program discussions.
  - Tenth Review of the IMF’s Data Standards Initiatives to promote data transparency.
  - Review of the Institutional View on Liberalization and Management of Capital Flows informed by the Integrated Policy Framework and the IEO’s evaluation of Fund advice on capital flows.
- Capacity Development (CD):
  - Briefings on CD Evaluations and Impact, including results from evaluations, results-based management, and other assessments.
  - Update on review of the CD Information Dissemination Framework covering sharing of CD information with stakeholders including the Executive Board, financing partners, and the public.
  - Annual informal engagement on Capacity Development Priorities for FY23-25.

### B. Facilitating a Transformational Recovery
- Overarching aim: support a green, digital, and inclusive global recovery through strategies in three priority areas.

- Climate:
  - Strategy for IMF Engagement on Climate Change Issues: explain why, when, and how the Fund should be engaged in climate change issues, including collaboration with stakeholders.
  - Follow-up work: Integration of Climate Change in the Public Investment Management Assessment Framework; Review of Climate Change Policy Assessment Pilots; Financial Stability Implications of Climate Risk.
  - New G-20 Data Gaps Green Initiative (DGI Green): expected to kick-off in 2022.

- Digitalization:
  - Digital Money Strategy: lays out IMF operational work, review of activities, partnerships, and resource implications.
  - International Monetary System and Digital Money: agenda on implications of widespread adoption of digital money for the international monetary system.
  - Briefing: Analytical Framework for Central Bank Digital Currency.
  - Staff Discussion Notes (SDNs): digital data frameworks; artificial intelligence in finance; women and fintech.

- Inclusion:
  - Initial engagement: Inequality, Gender, Financial Inclusion, and Social Spending: Proposals for Enhanced Fund Engagement to update Board on work to date and options for further engagement.
  - Briefing: Gender Strategy.
  - Fragile and Conflict-Affected States (FCS): strategy to provide an operating framework and priority actions for the next three years; engagement on Fragile and Conflict-Affected States: Financing Reform Options and Update on FCS Strategy and its Resource Needs.

- Institutional monitoring and evaluations:
  - Resume discussions on the Periodic Monitoring Report and present the MIPs on Long-standing Open Actions and Bank-Fund Collaboration.
  - Two additional IEO evaluations: Adjustment and Growth in IMF-Supported Programs and IMF’s Engagement with Small States; respective MIPs expected within six months from Board discussions.

### C. Bolstering Fund Resources and Advancing Governance Reform
- Sixteenth General Review of Quotas:
  - Work started with briefing on key issues and informal engagements on adequacy of Fund resources and on quota formula and realignment of shares.
  - Committee of the Whole to convene twice this year for initial considerations on adequacy of Fund resources, and formula and realignment.
  - Outcome will inform first semi-annual progress report to the Board of Governors by the Annual Meetings and work ahead of the second report by the 2022 Spring Meetings.
  - Objective: conclude the 16th Review by no later than mid-December 2023.
- Resource readiness:
  - Staff to keep demand for Fund resources under close review and brief the Board as warranted.
  - Continued assessment of need for possible activation of the New Arrangements to Borrow (NAB) in the period ahead.

### D. Modernizing the Workplace
- Proposed Budget Augmentation:
  - Board engagement on the possibility of a Proposed Budget Augmentation to consider resources for new priority work areas based on discussed strategies.
  - Complementary regular Board engagement on the FY2023-FY2025 Medium-Term Budget and income discussions.
- Financial and asset management:
  - Discussion: Review of the Investment Account and Trust Assets: Initial Considerations.
- Operational efficiency and human resources:
  - Briefings on information security and the Modernization Projects to enhance operational efficiency and streamline work processes.
  - Regular Board discussions on human resource issues including:
    - 2022 Review of Staff Compensation.
    - Staff Recruitment and Retention Experience for CY2021.
    - 2020-2021 Diversity & Inclusion Report.
  - Briefing received: Roadmap to the Future of Work at the Fund.
  - Continued engagement on new ways of working and updates on preparations for HQ resumption as needed.

*Source: ppea2021052*

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_Source: https://www.imf.org/-/media/files/publications/pp/2021/english/ppea2021052.pdf_