## ppea2025007

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**Canonical URL:** [ppea2025007](https://www.imf.org/-/media/files/publications/pp/2025/english/ppea2025007.pdf)

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---

### The context and key risks
- Trade tensions have soared following the tariff announcements by the U.S. and responses to them, elevating policy uncertainty, raising concerns about the future of the world trading system, and posing imminent and significant risks to global economic and financial stability.
- Transformative forces—digitalization/artificial intelligence (AI), demographic shifts, and climate transitions—are reshaping the economic landscape, creating opportunities and challenges.
- Growth prospects are weak and public debt is high, constraining job creation and investment; output remains well below pre-COVID forecasts in many countries, and low-income countries (LICs) have been disproportionately scarred.
- Medium-term growth prospects have moderated due to flagging productivity, chronic underinvestment, and slowing labor force growth.
- Mounting debt service, exacerbated by higher interest rates, has left many emerging market and developing economies (EMDEs) with limited policy space and increased financial stability risks.
- Elevated uncertainty amplifies the need to safeguard macroeconomic and financial stability; sudden shifts in trade flows, abrupt repricing of financial assets, or disorderly exchange rate adjustments could undermine stability and trigger destabilizing spillovers.
- Transformations present opportunities (e.g., generative AI to boost productivity, demographic dividends in some EMDEs, energy transition opportunities) and risks (job displacement from AI, risks from alternatives to traditional banking, digital assets and payments, ageing populations in many advanced economies (AEs), and rising frequency/intensity of natural disasters affecting small island and developing economies and fragile and conflict-affected states).

### IMF mission, role, and priorities
- Foundational roles:
  - Promote macroeconomic and financial stability.
  - Facilitate balanced expansion of international trade.
  - Resolve balance of payments (BoP) problems.
  - Provide policy advice, capacity development (CD), and lending when necessary.
- Institutional priorities in a rapidly evolving, high-uncertainty environment:
  - Emphasize macroeconomic and financial stability, private sector-led growth, and solutions to shared challenges.
  - Prioritize capacity development to build stronger institutions and policy frameworks in EMDEs, especially LICs and fragile and conflict-affected states (FCSs).
  - Review the lending toolkit to ensure it provides insurance against shocks and facilitates orderly resolution of BoP problems.
  - Provide tailored macro-structural, fiscal, and financial reform advice to boost investment, productivity, jobs, and incomes.
  - Facilitate cooperative solutions among near-universal membership and promote a rules-based, level playing field in international trade; find constructive solutions to resolve trade tensions.
  - Support international efforts to tackle debt vulnerabilities and assess the Global Financial Safety Net (GFSN).

### Main elements of an IMF response (overall pillars)
- The IMF response will be anchored on key pillars and exploiting synergies across them:
  - 1) further sharpen the focus of surveillance;
  - 2) address debt challenges;
  - 3) fortify the lending toolkit and the Global Financial Safety Net;
  - 4) enhance capacity development; and
  - 5) maintain a strong and agile institution.

### Further sharpening the focus of surveillance
- Core approach:
  - Uphold analytical rigor, evenhandedness, and tailored policy advice across bilateral and multilateral surveillance.
  - The forthcoming Comprehensive Surveillance Review (CSR) will develop surveillance priorities and modalities for the next 5 years.
- Fiscal policy (granular advice):
  - Most AEs and EMDEs require sustained fiscal adjustments, formulated as part of a medium-term plan, to rebuild depleted fiscal buffers and ensure debt sustainability.
  - Enhance support to calibrate pace and composition between revenue and spending, account for longer-term spending needs (e.g., ageing, energy transition, and national defense).
  - Fiscal advice geared to support future growth and preserve social cohesion by protecting essential investment and ensuring fair burden sharing, drawing on distributional impact analysis.
  - Aim for greater efficiency and equity in revenue mobilization and efficiency/productivity in public spending.
  - Continue support to integrate climate risks in macroeconomic policies, including building buffers, investing in resilience, and improving fiscal risk management for natural disasters, in collaboration with other institutions.
- Monetary and exchange rate policies:
  - Update analytical toolkit and advise on monetary policy interactions with fiscal policy, managing disruptive capital flows, and exchange rate volatility, guided by the Integrated Policy Framework.
  - Continue to advocate for central bank independence and clear communication to keep inflation in check.
- Financial surveillance to keep up with rapid innovation:
  - Continuously upgrade tools to assess emerging macrofinancial risks from NBFIs, crypto assets, new payment platforms, and AI.
  - The forthcoming Review of Financial Sector Assessment Programs will guide efforts to deepen macrofinancial analysis in bilateral surveillance and produce cutting-edge analysis of risks from changes in the financial system (including the nonbank–bank nexus, cross-border exposures, innovations in digital payments, and cyber risks).
  - Help countries find regulatory balance to harness innovation for growth while preserving stability.
  - Joint work with the Bank for International Settlements and the Financial Stability Board to develop frameworks that foster innovation while mitigating risks and safeguard the cross-border payments system.
- Growth-enhancing reforms:
  - Support reforms to lift productivity and private sector-led growth, including strengthening governance, opening markets to competition, improving labor markets (including raising female labor force participation), and financial sector reforms to develop capital markets.
  - Fiscal reforms to remove ineffective subsidies, boost infrastructure investment, support structural reforms, and reward innovation through a coherent tax system to crowd in private investment.
- IMS, external imbalances, and spillovers:
  - Continue rigorous assessment of external imbalances and recommend multilaterally consistent, country-specific policy changes for orderly rebalancing, including orderly exchange rate adjustments and tailored domestic demand/fiscal deficit recommendations.
  - Cover these topics in bilateral Article IV consultations and the 2025 External Sector Report, which will review developments in the IMS.
  - Deepen analysis of how changes in finance, cross-border capital flows, and the use of currencies could impact the functioning of the IMS; assess spillovers from trade and industrial policy measures and enhance coverage in surveillance.
- Adapting surveillance:
  - CSR to develop high-level principles for institutional engagement in structural areas (depth, breadth, frequency).
  - Explore filters—enterprise implementation risk, required expertise, budget implications—beyond macro-criticality for coverage of structural issues.
- Surveillance modalities:
  - Strengthen synergies across multilateral, regional, and bilateral surveillance layers by better integrating and cross-pollinating analytical work and policy findings (including on spillovers from financial innovations, imbalances, and trade and industrial policies).
  - Explore enhanced engagement with evolving regional and other economic blocs.
  - Strengthen engagement with FCSs and small states guided by the Strategy for Fragile and Conflict-Affected States and the Guidance Note on IMF Engagement with Small Developing States.
  - CSR to explore modernizing and streamlining Article IV consultations to enhance adaptability and assist members in identifying data gaps and strengthening reporting.

### Addressing debt challenges (overview)
- Role:
  - The IMF plays a leading role on debt issues through analysis of debt vulnerabilities and support of international efforts to address them.
- Current assessment:
  - While the risk of a systemic debt crisis appears broadly contained, debt vulnerabilities are elevated in many EMDEs, including from high interest payments and refinancing needs.

### Strengthening the Debt Architecture and Restructuring Processes
- Initiatives:
  - Advance initiatives to strengthen the debt architecture, including the Common Framework (CF) and the Global Sovereign Debt Roundtable (GSDR) launched jointly with the World Bank and G20 Presidency.
- Restructuring processes and support:
  - Continue to help strengthen the CF, including through contributions at the G20 and work at the GSDR, and provide technical support in individual restructurings.
  - At the request of debtors considering debt restructuring, provide scenario analyses and information on operational aspects of the restructuring process and application of IMF policies, while preserving the institution’s role as a neutral advisor.
  - The GSDR could play a stronger role, such as publishing best practices and identifying ways to address debt and debt restructuring challenges, including preventing the build-up of unsustainable debt.
- 3-pillar approach to address liquidity pressures (proposed jointly with the World Bank):
  - Pillar 1: Structural reforms, spending efficiency, and domestic resource mobilization.
  - Pillar 2: Coordinated international efforts to secure adequate financial support from bilateral and multilateral partners.
  - Pillar 3: Where relevant, measures to reduce debt servicing burdens, such as deploying risk-sharing instruments, to attract private capital inflows.
  - The approach is implemented flexibly based on country specificities, including with capacity development support.
- Evolving debt landscape and planned updates:
  - Update to the 2020 stock take on the international architecture for resolving sovereign debt involving private sector creditors.
  - Finalization of the Review of the Debt Sustainability Framework for Low-Income Countries to ensure it remains fit for purpose.
  - Forthcoming Sovereign Risk and Debt Sustainability Framework guidance update to simplify implementation.
  - Medium-term work: review of financing assurances policies, lending into arrears policies, and the role of the IMF in debt restructuring.

### Fortifying the Lending Toolkit and the Global Financial Safety Net (GFSN)
- Role and objectives:
  - IMF plays a unique role in the GFSN underpinned by almost universal membership and catalytic nature of financing.
  - Temporary lending, supported by appropriate conditionality, provides safeguards to creditors and enables the revolving nature of IMF resources.
- Reviews and reforms under way or planned:
  - Full implementation of the Poverty Reduction and Growth Trust Reform (approved in parallel with Charges and Surcharges Reform) is essential to bolster capacity to support LICs while restoring the Trust’s self-sustainability.
  - Launching the Review of Program Design and Conditionality to identify ways to ensure IMF-supported programs address macroeconomic imbalances while promoting growth.
  - Review will examine whether the nature of BoP problems supported by some General Resource Account arrangements has evolved to become more entrenched.
  - Forthcoming Review of the Exceptional Access Policies (EAP) to examine adequacy in balancing large financing and safeguarding IMF resources.
  - Planned Review of the Resilience and Sustainability Trust to take stock of experience and assess eligibility, access levels, and scope.
  - Reflection on adequacy of the lending toolkit to swiftly respond to systemic shocks while maintaining necessary safeguards.
- Precautionary facilities:
  - Continue exploring ways to strengthen precautionary facilities to make them more useful as a crisis prevention tool, including in the forthcoming Review of the Short-Term Liquidity Line.
- GFSN cohesion and coordination:
  - Forthcoming IMF paper will assess the GFSN and its ability to safeguard financial stability, prevent contagion, and respond to risks from transformative forces including digitalization and AI.
  - IMF will work closely with Regional Financing Arrangements (RFAs) to explore greater collaboration and information sharing.
  - Advocate for enhanced data disclosure, particularly regarding central bank swap arrangements and their terms, as key for more effective responses to shocks.
- Recent borrower cost developments:
  - The recent Charges and Surcharges Reform has significantly lowered members’ borrowing costs.

### Enhancing Capacity Development (CD)
- Role and integration:
  - CD as a core pillar integrated with surveillance and lending to provide evidence-based and granular policy advice.
  - CD plays a crucial role in helping countries, particularly LICs and FCSs, develop human capacity and build stronger institutions.
- Focus and delivery:
  - Example initiative: Joint Domestic Resource Mobilization Initiative with the World Bank to help EMDEs boost public revenue, enhance spending efficiency, and develop domestic capital markets as part of the 3-pillar approach.
- Modernization and resilience of CD:
  - Implement 2024 Capacity Development Strategy Review recommendations to make CD delivery more flexible, tailored, and better integrated with policy advice and program design.
  - Modernize CD delivery by leveraging new technologies, enhancing field presence via regional capacity development and training centers, and reinforcing coordination with partners to improve traction, efficiency, and funding.
  - Develop a stabilization mechanism to mitigate funding risks to sustained CD provision.
  - Further integrate CD with modern tools into IMF surveillance and lending activities and internal economic analysis.
  - Maintain ability to scale up CD during crises to accelerate recovery.

### Maintaining a Strong and Agile Institution
- Quotas and governance:
  - Members approved a 50 percent quota increase under the 16th General Review of Quotas (GRQ) in 2023; work towards its implementation is ongoing.
  - Continue working with the membership on quota realignment under the 17th GRQ to ensure continued legitimacy and representation.
- Institutional performance and resource management:
  - Administrative budget is roughly the same in real terms as it was two decades ago.
  - IMF has absorbed a doubling of program countries since 2020, increased requests for more granular policy advice, and a significant rise in demand for CD—assisted by partner support, while meeting new challenges from AI and cybersecurity.
  - Continue to seek efficiency gains through periodic policy reviews and an ongoing streamlining exercise of operations to prioritize highest needs.
  - Evaluating global presence to align with the new environment, mindful of cost efficiency and best value to the membership.
  - Continue enhancing enterprise risk management to ensure trade-offs in decision making are fully considered.
- Human capital and technology:
  - Commitment to attracting and retaining top talent globally; continue building a versatile workforce with the right blend of skills and experience.
  - Leverage new tools, including AI, to enhance efficiency of work and improve staff well-being.

### Operational Reach, Deliverables, and Selected Metrics
- Coverage and outputs:
  - Number of countries covered by at least one Article IV Consultation or Financial Sector Assessment Program, 2020 to end March 2025.
  - We provided macroeconomic and financial policy advice to our wide membership.
  - We provided bilateral surveillance despite travel disruptions due to the pandemic.
  - 191 countries (context: coverage).
  - Average of 150 bilateral, regional, and multilateral surveillance products every year.
  - Nearly 4,000 projects delivered since 2022.
- CD and participation:
  - More members benefited from CD and lending since the pandemic:
    - 97 countries (context unclear in chart).
    - 177 countries (context unclear in chart).
  - Number of countries to which capacity development was delivered, May 2022 to February 2025.
  - CD delivery has grown significantly, and +225k people have participated in online learning since 2013.
  - Index of staff time spent on CD, FY2005–09=100 (chart time series points visible for 2015, 17, 19, 21, 23, 25).
  - Nearly all regions benefited from CD to strengthen institutions and policy frameworks.
  - Most CD focused on building capacity in fiscal, monetary, and financial policy areas.
  - Regional offices help deliver CD that is flexible, tailored, and integrated.
- Lending and credit outstanding:
  - IMF credit has grown in recent years, reflecting countries’ increased need for financing.
  - Financial support approved by the IMF (chart coverage to end March 2025).
  - Credit outstanding, US dollars, billion, monthly, 2015 to end March 2025.
  - Precautionary facilities reflect Flexible Credit Lines currently approved.
- Surveillance and FSAP metrics by income group and region:
  - Article IV Consultation and Financial Sector Assessment Program counts shown by region and income group.
  - Total number by income group: (44)(96)(60) and Total number: 626 (as displayed in chart area).
  - Article IV Consultation and Financial Sector Assessment Program totals displayed as 168, 289, 126, 182, 32, etc., within chart panels and totals.

*Source: ppea2025007*

### Section 1

### THE MANAGING DIRECTOR’S GLOBAL POLICY AGENDA

### The context and key risks
- Trade tensions have soared following the tariff announcements by the U.S. and responses to them, elevating policy uncertainty, raising concerns about the future of the world trading system, and posing imminent and significant risks to global economic and financial stability.
- Transformative forces—digitalization/artificial intelligence (AI), demographic shifts, and climate transitions—are reshaping the economic landscape, creating opportunities and challenges.
- Growth prospects are weak and public debt is high, constraining job creation and investment; output remains well below pre-COVID forecasts in many countries, and low-income countries (LICs) have been disproportionately scarred.
- Medium-term growth prospects have moderated due to flagging productivity, chronic underinvestment, and slowing labor force growth.
- Mounting debt service, exacerbated by higher interest rates, has left many emerging market and developing economies (EMDEs) with limited policy space and increased financial stability risks.
- Elevated uncertainty amplifies the need to safeguard macroeconomic and financial stability; sudden shifts in trade flows, abrupt repricing of financial assets, or disorderly exchange rate adjustments could undermine stability and trigger destabilizing spillovers.
- Transformations present opportunities (e.g., generative AI to boost productivity, demographic dividends in some EMDEs, energy transition opportunities) and risks (job displacement from AI, risks from alternatives to traditional banking, digital assets and payments, ageing populations in many advanced economies (AEs), and rising frequency/intensity of natural disasters affecting small island and developing economies and fragile and conflict-affected states).

### IMF mission, role, and priorities
- The IMF’s foundational roles: promote macroeconomic and financial stability, facilitate balanced expansion of international trade, resolve balance of payments (BoP) problems, provide policy advice, capacity development (CD), and lending when necessary.
- Institutional priorities in a rapidly evolving, high-uncertainty environment:
  - Emphasize macroeconomic and financial stability, private sector-led growth, and solutions to shared challenges.
  - Prioritize capacity development to build stronger institutions and policy frameworks in EMDEs, especially LICs and fragile and conflict-affected states (FCSs).
  - Review the lending toolkit to ensure it provides insurance against shocks and facilitates orderly resolution of BoP problems.
  - Provide tailored macro-structural, fiscal, and financial reform advice to boost investment, productivity, jobs, and incomes.
  - Facilitate cooperative solutions among near-universal membership and promote a rules-based, level playing field in international trade; find constructive solutions to resolve trade tensions.
  - Support international efforts to tackle debt vulnerabilities and assess the Global Financial Safety Net (GFSN).

### Main elements of an IMF response (overall pillars)
- The IMF response will be anchored on key pillars and exploiting synergies across them:
  1) further sharpen the focus of surveillance;
  2) address debt challenges;
  3) fortify the lending toolkit and the Global Financial Safety Net;
  4) enhance capacity development; and
  5) maintain a strong and agile institution.

### Further sharpening the focus of surveillance
- The IMF will uphold analytical rigor, evenhandedness, and tailored policy advice across bilateral and multilateral surveillance; the forthcoming Comprehensive Surveillance Review (CSR) will develop surveillance priorities and modalities for the next 5 years.
- Specific surveillance emphases and actions:
  - Granular advice on fiscal policy:
    - Most AEs and EMDEs require sustained fiscal adjustments, formulated as part of a medium-term plan, to rebuild depleted fiscal buffers and ensure debt sustainability.
    - Enhance support to calibrate pace and composition between revenue and spending, account for longer-term spending needs (e.g., ageing, energy transition, and national defense).
    - Fiscal advice geared to support future growth and preserve social cohesion by protecting essential investment and ensuring fair burden sharing, drawing on distributional impact analysis.
    - Aim for greater efficiency and equity in revenue mobilization and efficiency/productivity in public spending.
    - Continue support to integrate climate risks in macroeconomic policies, including building buffers, investing in resilience, and improving fiscal risk management for natural disasters, in collaboration with other institutions.
  - Monetary and exchange rate policies:
    - Update analytical toolkit and advise on monetary policy interactions with fiscal policy, managing disruptive capital flows, and exchange rate volatility, guided by the Integrated Policy Framework.
    - Continue to advocate for central bank independence and clear communication to keep inflation in check.
  - Financial surveillance to keep up with rapid innovation:
    - Continuously upgrade tools to assess emerging macrofinancial risks from NBFIs, crypto assets, new payment platforms, and AI.
    - The forthcoming Review of Financial Sector Assessment Programs will guide efforts to deepen macrofinancial analysis in bilateral surveillance and produce cutting-edge analysis of risks from changes in the financial system (including the nonbank–bank nexus, cross-border exposures, innovations in digital payments, and cyber risks).
    - Help countries find regulatory balance to harness innovation for growth while preserving stability.
    - Joint work with the Bank for International Settlements and the Financial Stability Board to develop frameworks that foster innovation while mitigating risks and safeguard the cross-border payments system.
  - Growth-enhancing reforms:
    - Support reforms to lift productivity and private sector-led growth, including strengthening governance, opening markets to competition, improving labor markets (including raising female labor force participation), and financial sector reforms to develop capital markets.
    - Fiscal reforms to remove ineffective subsidies, boost infrastructure investment, support structural reforms, and reward innovation through a coherent tax system to crowd in private investment.
  - IMS, external imbalances, and spillovers:
    - Continue rigorous assessment of external imbalances and recommend multilaterally consistent, country-specific policy changes for orderly rebalancing, including orderly exchange rate adjustments and tailored domestic demand/fiscal deficit recommendations.
    - Cover these topics in bilateral Article IV consultations and the 2025 External Sector Report, which will review developments in the IMS.
    - Deepen analysis of how changes in finance, cross-border capital flows, and the use of currencies could impact the functioning of the IMS; assess spillovers from trade and industrial policy measures and enhance coverage in surveillance.
  - Adapting surveillance:
    - CSR to develop high-level principles for institutional engagement in structural areas (depth, breadth, frequency).
    - Explore filters—enterprise implementation risk, required expertise, budget implications—beyond macro-criticality for coverage of structural issues.
  - Surveillance modalities:
    - Strengthen synergies across multilateral, regional, and bilateral surveillance layers by better integrating and cross-pollinating analytical work and policy findings (including on spillovers from financial innovations, imbalances, and trade and industrial policies).
    - Explore enhanced engagement with evolving regional and other economic blocs.
    - Strengthen engagement with FCSs and small states guided by the Strategy for Fragile and Conflict-Affected States and the Guidance Note on IMF Engagement with Small Developing States.
    - CSR to explore modernizing and streamlining Article IV consultations to enhance adaptability and assist members in identifying data gaps and strengthening reporting.

### Addressing debt challenges (opening)
- The IMF plays a leading role on debt issues through analysis of debt vulnerabilities and support of international efforts to address them.
- While the risk of a systemic debt crisis appears broadly contained, debt vulnerabilities are elevated in many EMDEs, including from high interest payments and refinancing needs.

*Source: ppea2025007 - Section 1*

### Section 2

### ppea2025007 - Section 2

### Strengthening the Debt Architecture and Restructuring Processes
- Advance initiatives to strengthen the debt architecture, including the Common Framework (CF) and the Global Sovereign Debt Roundtable (GSDR) launched jointly with the World Bank and G20 Presidency.
- Restructuring processes:
  - Continue to help strengthen the CF, including through contributions at the G20 and work at the GSDR, and provide technical support in individual restructurings.
  - At the request of debtors considering debt restructuring, provide scenario analyses and information on operational aspects of the restructuring process and application of IMF policies, while preserving the institution’s role as a neutral advisor.
  - The GSDR could play a stronger role, such as publishing best practices and identifying ways to address debt and debt restructuring challenges, including preventing the build-up of unsustainable debt.
- 3-pillar approach to address liquidity pressures (proposed jointly with the World Bank):
  - Pillar 1: Structural reforms, spending efficiency, and domestic resource mobilization.
  - Pillar 2: Coordinated international efforts to secure adequate financial support from bilateral and multilateral partners.
  - Pillar 3: Where relevant, measures to reduce debt servicing burdens, such as deploying risk-sharing instruments, to attract private capital inflows.
  - The approach is implemented flexibly based on country specificities, including with capacity development support.
- Evolving debt landscape and planned updates:
  - Update to the 2020 stock take on the international architecture for resolving sovereign debt involving private sector creditors.
  - Finalization of the Review of the Debt Sustainability Framework for Low-Income Countries to ensure it remains fit for purpose.
  - Forthcoming Sovereign Risk and Debt Sustainability Framework guidance update to simplify implementation.
  - Medium-term work: review of financing assurances policies, lending into arrears policies, and the role of the IMF in debt restructuring.

### Fortifying the Lending Toolkit and the Global Financial Safety Net (GFSN)
- Role and objectives:
  - IMF plays a unique role in the GFSN underpinned by almost universal membership and catalytic nature of financing.
  - Temporary lending, supported by appropriate conditionality, provides safeguards to creditors and enables the revolving nature of IMF resources.
- Reviews and reforms under way or planned:
  - Full implementation of the Poverty Reduction and Growth Trust Reform (approved in parallel with Charges and Surcharges Reform) is essential to bolster capacity to support LICs while restoring the Trust’s self-sustainability.
  - Launching the Review of Program Design and Conditionality to identify ways to ensure IMF-supported programs address macroeconomic imbalances while promoting growth.
  - Review will examine whether the nature of BoP problems supported by some General Resource Account arrangements has evolved to become more entrenched.
  - Forthcoming Review of the Exceptional Access Policies (EAP) to examine adequacy in balancing large financing and safeguarding IMF resources.
  - Planned Review of the Resilience and Sustainability Trust to take stock of experience and assess eligibility, access levels, and scope.
  - Reflection on adequacy of the lending toolkit to swiftly respond to systemic shocks while maintaining necessary safeguards.
- Precautionary facilities:
  - Continue exploring ways to strengthen precautionary facilities to make them more useful as a crisis prevention tool, including in the forthcoming Review of the Short-Term Liquidity Line.
- GFSN cohesion and coordination:
  - Forthcoming IMF paper will assess the GFSN and its ability to safeguard financial stability, prevent contagion, and respond to risks from transformative forces including digitalization and AI.
  - IMF will work closely with Regional Financing Arrangements (RFAs) to explore greater collaboration and information sharing.
  - Advocate for enhanced data disclosure, particularly regarding central bank swap arrangements and their terms, as key for more effective responses to shocks.
- Recent borrower cost developments:
  - The recent Charges and Surcharges Reform has significantly lowered members’ borrowing costs.

### Enhancing Capacity Development (CD)
- CD as a core pillar integrated with surveillance and lending to provide evidence-based and granular policy advice.
- Focus and delivery:
  - CD plays a crucial role in helping countries, particularly LICs and FCSs, develop human capacity and build stronger institutions.
  - Example initiative: Joint Domestic Resource Mobilization Initiative with the World Bank to help EMDEs boost public revenue, enhance spending efficiency, and develop domestic capital markets as part of the 3-pillar approach.
- Modernization and resilience of CD:
  - Implement 2024 Capacity Development Strategy Review recommendations to make CD delivery more flexible, tailored, and better integrated with policy advice and program design.
  - Modernize CD delivery by leveraging new technologies, enhancing field presence via regional capacity development and training centers, and reinforcing coordination with partners to improve traction, efficiency, and funding.
  - Develop a stabilization mechanism to mitigate funding risks to sustained CD provision.
  - Further integrate CD with modern tools into IMF surveillance and lending activities and internal economic analysis.
  - Maintain ability to scale up CD during crises to accelerate recovery.

### Maintaining a Strong and Agile Institution
- Quotas and governance:
  - Members approved a 50 percent quota increase under the 16th General Review of Quotas (GRQ) in 2023; work towards its implementation is ongoing.
  - Continue working with the membership on quota realignment under the 17th GRQ to ensure continued legitimacy and representation.
- Institutional performance and resource management:
  - Administrative budget is roughly the same in real terms as it was two decades ago.
  - IMF has absorbed a doubling of program countries since 2020, increased requests for more granular policy advice, and a significant rise in demand for CD—assisted by partner support, while meeting new challenges from AI and cybersecurity.
  - Continue to seek efficiency gains through periodic policy reviews and an ongoing streamlining exercise of operations to prioritize highest needs.
  - Evaluating global presence to align with the new environment, mindful of cost efficiency and best value to the membership.
  - Continue enhancing enterprise risk management to ensure trade-offs in decision making are fully considered.
- Human capital and technology:
  - Commitment to attracting and retaining top talent globally; continue building a versatile workforce with the right blend of skills and experience.
  - Leverage new tools, including AI, to enhance efficiency of work and improve staff well-being.

### Operational Reach, Deliverables, and Selected Metrics
- Surveillance, Capacity Development, and Lending coverage and outputs:
  - Number of countries covered by at least one Article IV Consultation or Financial Sector Assessment Program, 2020 to end March 2025.
  - We provided macroeconomic and financial policy advice to our wide membership.
  - We provided bilateral surveillance despite travel disruptions due to the pandemic.
  - 191 countries (context: coverage).
  - Average of 150 bilateral, regional, and multilateral surveillance products every year.
  - Nearly 4,000 projects delivered since 2022.
  - More members benefited from CD and lending since the pandemic:
    - 97 countries (context unclear in chart).
    - 177 countries (context unclear in chart).
- Capacity development delivery and participation:
  - Number of countries to which capacity development was delivered, May 2022 to February 2025.
  - CD delivery has grown significantly, and +225k people have participated in online learning since 2013.
  - Index of staff time spent on CD, FY2005–09=100 (chart time series points visible for 2015, 17, 19, 21, 23, 25).
  - Nearly all regions benefited from CD to strengthen institutions and policy frameworks.
  - Most CD focused on building capacity in fiscal, monetary, and financial policy areas.
  - Regional offices help deliver CD that is flexible, tailored, and integrated.
- Lending and credit outstanding:
  - IMF credit has grown in recent years, reflecting countries’ increased need for financing.
  - Financial support approved by the IMF (chart coverage to end March 2025).
  - Credit outstanding, US dollars, billion, monthly, 2015 to end March 2025.
  - Precautionary facilities reflect Flexible Credit Lines currently approved.
- Surveillance and FSAP metrics by income group and region (chart totals):
  - Article IV Consultation and Financial Sector Assessment Program counts shown by region and income group.
  - Total number by income group: (44)(96)(60) and Total number: 626 (as displayed in chart area).
  - Article IV Consultation and Financial Sector Assessment Program totals displayed as 168, 289, 126, 182, 32, etc., within chart panels and totals.

*Source: ppea2025007 - Section 2*

---


_Source: https://www.imf.org/-/media/files/publications/pp/2025/english/ppea2025007.pdf_