Policy Papers

Operational Guidance Note for IMF Engagement on Social Spending Issues

April 30, 2024

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Format: Chicago

International Monetary Fund. Strategy, Policy, & Review Department, and International Monetary Fund. Fiscal Affairs Dept. "Operational Guidance Note for IMF Engagement on Social Spending Issues", Policy Papers 2024, 022 (2024), accessed July 8, 2025, https://doi.org/10.5089/9798400272271.007

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Summary

This note provides general guidance on the operationalization of the strategy for IMF engagement on social spending. Social spending plays a critical role as a key lever for promoting inclusive growth, addressing inequality, protecting vulnerable groups during structural change and adjustment, smoothing consumption over the lifecycle, and stabilizing demand during economic shocks. Social spending policies have also been playing an important role in tackling the structural challenges associated with demographic shifts, gender inequality, technological advances, and climate change. This note builds on a series of notes on IMF engagement on specific social spending issues since the publication of the 2019 strategy paper and provides operational guidance on when and how to engage on social spending issues, in the context of surveillance, IMF-supported programs, and capacity development.

Subject: Education, Education spending, Expenditure, Health care spending, Monetary policy, Political economy

Keywords: Education, Education spending, Fiscal sustainability, Health, Health care spending, IMF capacity development, Pensions, Social safety nets, Social spending, Social spending conditionality, Social spending floor, Spending adequacy, Spending efficiency, Spending issue, Sub-Saharan Africa, Transparency policy, West Africa

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