Press Briefing Transcript: IMF Managing Director Global Policy Agenda Transcript, Annual Meetings 2025
IMF News, October 16, 2025
Source details
- Canonical URL
- Press Briefing Transcript: IMF Managing Director Global Policy Agenda Transcript, Annual Meetings 2025
Other formats
Bibliographic details
- Published: October 16, 2025
Global growth outlook and macroeconomic state
- Global growth projections from the World Economic Outlook:
- 3.3 percent last year
- 3.2 percent this year
- 3.1 percent in 2026
- Characterization: "better than feared but worse than needed."
- Medium-term concerns:
- Medium-term growth prospects remain weak.
- Public debt is near-record highs and continues to climb.
- The global economy is "excessively imbalanced."
- Uncertainty has continued to go "up, up, up."
Drivers of recent resilience
- Two core reasons the global economy has been more resilient than feared:
- Improved policy fundamentals: many countries, especially emerging markets, have strengthened institutions and frameworks since the Global Financial Crisis.
- Private sector adaptability: examples include import frontloading and supply-chain strengthening.
- Warning: resilience notwithstanding, the outlook is underwhelming and requires further policy action.
Fiscal and monetary policy priorities (IMF Global Policy Agenda)
- Overarching IMF priorities emphasized:
- Unlock private-sector growth to deliver jobs and better livelihoods.
- Secure sound macroeconomic fundamentals to navigate greater turbulence.
- Reduce global imbalances.
- Fiscal policy guidance:
- Rebuild fiscal space and reduce debt.
- Rely more on domestic sources of revenues.
- Make "smart budget choices."
- Monetary and financial sector guidance:
- Preserve stability and guard against financial stability risks.
- On global imbalances:
- Countries with excessive surpluses, "like China," should boost domestic demand, "including by spending less on industrial policy and more on social safety nets."
- Countries with excessive deficits, "notably the United States," need to reduce fiscal deficits and incentivize private savings.
IMF institutional work and programmatic priorities
- Ongoing and planned IMF work highlighted:
- Comprehensive Surveillance Review to sharpen focus on surveillance, including advice on trade policies and domestic reforms to rebalance the economy.
- Ongoing review on conditionality to strengthen program design.
- Mobilize members to fully implement the PRGT reform agreed last October to preserve capacity to finance low-income countries.
- Call to consider replenishing the Catastrophe Containment and Relief Trust (CCRT), described as "depleted."
- Continued work on the Global Sovereign Debt Roundtable and reviewing the debt sustainability framework for low-income countries.
- Intention to make more systemic use of IMF "good offices" to improve coordination between creditors and debtors.
AI, its macroeconomic contribution, and preparedness
- IMF assessment of AI's potential contribution to growth: somewhere between 0.1 and 0.8 percent.
- Caveats and conditions:
- AI's contribution depends on two main enablers: energy supply at scale and penetration of AI across sectors to lift productivity.
- Energy demand for AI is described as "equivalent to half of the energy consumption of the United States."
- Current AI investment distribution is heavily concentrated in the United States; the rest of the world trails.
- IMF AI Preparedness Index:
- Ranks 174 countries on four criteria: digital infrastructure, labor market skills, innovation (penetration into sectors like transport, agriculture, healthcare), and regulation and ethics.
- Distribution: advanced economies and some emerging markets (including China and most of the Gulf) concentrate in the top one third; low-income countries are at the bottom.
- Risk: AI could raise productivity while increasing divergence within and across countries—hence the emphasis on preparedness.
Financial stability and nonbank financing risks
- Financial Stability Report highlights:
- A significant shift of financing from the banking sector to nonbank financial institutions; "more than half of financing is now there."
- Nonbank financial institutions do not have the same regulatory oversight as banks, raising vulnerabilities if the sector grows further.
- IMF concern: potential for more severe stress depends on real-economy performance and the magnitude of nonbank institutions in trouble.
- Context: global lessons from the Global Financial Crisis have improved frameworks and reserves in many economies, but fiscal buffers are largely exhausted and monetary policy still wrestles with inflation.
- Policy implication: greater attention and oversight of nonbank financial institutions are urged.
Country and regional assessments, examples, and recommendations
- Group of 7 (directional fiscal view):
- Debt build-up driven primarily by advanced economies (and some emerging markets).
- Countries identified as needing fiscal consolidation: the United States, France, Italy.
- Japan also highlighted as needing to "look into their borrowing."
- Germany and Canada described as "in a better position."
- Canada-specific notes:
- Authorities modernizing the budget framework by separating operating expenses from investment to focus on progrowth investment.
- Moving the budget presentation from spring to early November to better align with construction season and signal predictability for investment projects.
- Priority spending areas: housing, infrastructure, energy.
- China:
- Growth projections: 4.8 percent this year and 4.2 percent (presumably next year).
- China is growing faster than the global average and thus contributing to global growth.
- China faces a "fork in the road" between export-oriented model and reorientation toward domestic consumption.
- Three priorities for China to support domestic rebalancing:
- Resolve real estate sector problems decisively to restore consumer confidence.
- Increase social safety nets and redirect spending away from industrial policy.
- Open up and deepen market activity in services (education, healthcare, other services).
- Note: "China has been spending about 4 percent of GPA to support industries" (IMF comment on past industrial policy spending).
- Senegal:
- Senegal uncovered a major hidden-debt misreporting problem and requested an IMF program.
- IMF dispatched/dispatching a team immediately after the Annual Meetings to assist; IMF engaged constructively with Senegalese authorities.
- IMF does not comment on rating agencies' downgrades.
- Middle East:
- Ceasefire and reduced tensions would provide a "peace dividend" benefiting economies such as Egypt, Jordan, Lebanon.
- IMF already has programs with Egypt and Jordan; Lebanon has requested a program; IMF teams have engaged with Syria on rebuilding institutions, including the central bank.
Trade, protectionism, and implications for growth
- Multilateral trade stance:
- Of 191 IMF members, only three have moved more forcefully on tariffs (United States, China, and to a certain degree Canada); 188 countries continue to prefer trading on most-favored-nation rules.
- IMF encourages countries to avoid trade restrictions; warns that tariff use by large economies can be counterproductive for open economies.
- Regional trade integration:
- Growing ambition for regional trade integration in places such as the Gulf Cooperation Council, ASEAN, and Central Asia.
- India:
- India cited as an "efficient growth engine" due to significant reforms (tax reform, infrastructure, digital infrastructure).
- Recommendations for India:
- Continue reforms that have driven growth.
- Consider greater trade integration and removal of self-imposed trade barriers.
- Invest further in education, skills, and pro-private-sector regulation to lift productivity and growth.
Inflation and trade tensions
- Inflation trends:
- Overall inflation trending down with regional differences: parts of Asia disinflating (in some places arguably "too far"), euro area around target, United States somewhat higher.
- Trade tensions and inflation:
- Tariffs act as an inflationary push for the originating country but may contain inflation for countries on the receiving end.
- So far, tariff impacts on US inflation have been "moot" due to:
- Importing and exporting firms absorbing costs in profits.
- Prepositioning of inventories.
- Supply-chain adjustments that may ease price pressures.
- IMF warning: flareups of trade tensions would have negative spillovers and are discouraged.
Concluding framing
- Central message from the Managing Director:
- "Uncertainty is here to stay, and change is unstoppable, but with change comes opportunity."
- IMF pledges to help countries pursue opportunities and provide calibrated, detailed country-specific advice.
- IMF positions itself as a prudent steward of members' resources and an active partner in strengthening stability, resolving balance of payments problems, and supporting reforms.
Transcript: Press Briefing Transcript: IMF Managing Director Global Policy Agenda Transcript, Annual Meetings 2025