Low-Income Countries
The IMF has acted with unprecedented speed and scale to support low-income countries during the pandemic. The Fund provided financial support to 53 of 69 eligible low-income countries in 2020 and in the first half of 2021, with about US$14 billion disbursed as zero percent interest rate loans from the Poverty Reduction and Growth Trust.
Most of this support was through the Fund’s emergency financing instruments—the Rapid Credit Facility (RCF) and Rapid Financing Instrument (RFI)—which provide immediate, one-time disbursements to countries facing urgent balance of payments needs. The Fund was able to respond to a record number of requests for financial assistance through a series of temporary access limit increases to the RCF and RFI, and temporary increases in the Poverty Reduction and Growth Trust (PRGT) overall access limits.
Asheville, N.C., United States: International Monetary Fund Managing Director Kristalina Georgieva delivered the following remarks at the G20 Finance Ministers and Central Bank Governors Meeting in Asheville, North Carolina
IMF staff and the Senegalese authorities have reached a staff-level agreement on the key economic policies that could underpin a new Extended Credit Facility (ECF) arrangement to support the authorities’ comprehensive economic reform program. The agreement is subject to IMF Executive Board approval.
The Swiss economy has demonstrated resilience amid heightened global uncertainty and global energy price shock, benefiting from strong policy frameworks and economic flexibility.
Paraguay’s economy continues to show remarkable resilience, supported by strong macroeconomic fundamentals and reform efforts. Sustained structural reform implementation will be key to lifting productivity and ensuring durable and inclusive growth over the medium term.
At the Jackson Hole Economic Policy Symposium, IMF Managing Director Kristalina Georgieva discussed how stablecoins, tokenization, and financial innovation could create a more fluid global financial system, and outlined the policies needed to manage risks and safeguard financial stability.
Timor-Leste’s growth is expected to remain resilient in the near term despite a more challenging external environment. Inflation remains low but is expected to rise moderately in the remainder of 2026.
The question for policymakers is how to seize new opportunities to renew Asia’s economic growth
In a world of frequent shocks, central bank communications should anchor expectations by explaining how policy responds to changing conditions, rather than committing to a fixed path
Many G20 economies face constraints from excessive labor, product-market, or consumer regulations, an IMF survey shows
Authors probe complex issues to shed light on global economic challenges
After restoring stability, Argentina needs to turn hard-won gains into lasting prosperity
Sustained rebalancing requires policy action in both surplus and deficit countries
This paper reports on the Fund’s income position for FY 2026 following the closing of the Fund’s accounts for the financial year and completion of the external audit. Total comprehensive income of the General Department was SDR 4.8 billion (or about US$6.5 billion) comprising General Resources Account (GRA) net income (SDR 1.9 billion), retained investment income (SDR 1 billion) and remeasurement gains reported under IAS 19 (SDR 1.9 billion). GRA net income, after taking into account the placement of SDR 1.38 billion from the General Resources Account (GRA) to the Interim Placement Administered Account (IPAA), increased Fund reserves by about SDR 0.5 billion. Remeasurement gains contributed a further SDR 1.9 billion to reserves. In accordance with decisions taken by the Executive Board in April 2026, the Endowment payout of US$208 million (SDR 151 million) was made to the GRA and a net transfer of currencies equivalent to SDR 0.3 billion will be made from the Fixed-Income Subaccount (FI) of the Investment Account (IA) to the GRA during FY 2027. The Fund’s precautionary balances reached SDR 26.3 billion at the end of FY 2026.
The paper presents highlights from the FY2026 budget, followed by a discussion of outputs based on the Fund Thematic Categories and of inputs.
In line with the framework for addressing excessive delays in the completion of Article IV consultations, the following table lists the IMF members for whom the Article IV consultation has been delayed by more than 18 months as of June 30, 2026.
This 2026 Guidance Note provides updated guidance to implement the Fund’s Transparency Policy revised in November 2024 and updates, and replaces, the 2014 Transparency Guidance Note. The objective of the Policy is to enhance the Fund’s credibility, effectiveness, and the traction of its advice by making important documents and the Fund’s views available to the public on a timely basis. The Policy also supports the quality of Fund surveillance and program work by subjecting the Fund to outside scrutiny and accountability. Thus, the Policy is important to support the Fund in fulfilling its mandate of promoting global economic and financial stability. To achieve these objectives, the Policy governs the publication of documents prepared for the IMF Executive Board and contains the rules for modifying documents issued to the Board before they are published.
This Note provides guidance to staff on the inclusion of financial integrity and anti-money laundering/combating the financing of terrorism (AML/CFT) issues in surveillance, financial sector assessment programs (FSAPs), and Use of Fund Resources (UFR), updating previous guidance issued in 2012. Specifically, in line with the 2023 Review of the Fund’s AML/CFT Strategy, the Guidance Note provides a framework for and illustrates how staff can deepen the integration of financial integrity and AML/CFT issues, based on staff’s enhanced understanding of money laundering (ML), financial crimes, and terrorism financing (TF) risks and of their macroeconomic and financial stability impact.
On June 15, 2026, the Managing Director of the International Monetary Fund (IMF) informed the Executive Board of the IMF regarding a general allocation of Special Drawing Rights (SDRs). The Managing Director concluded that she would not plan to make, by June 30 of this year, a proposal for the Thirteenth Basic Period (2027-2031), as there is neither a clear economic case nor the necessary support for a new allocation at present. This does not preclude the Managing Director to make a proposal, at her initiative or at the request of the Board of Governors or the Executive Board, at any time during the Thirteenth Basic Period. On June 26, 2026, the Managing Director reported her position to the Board of Governors of the IMF.
This paper studies market power in Mexican industries over the period 2008-23 using establishment-level data from the Mexican Economic Census. We document a substantial increase in the average price markup over marginal costs, from 12 percent in 2008 to 27 percent in 2023. The sources of this increase vary across sectors and time: services, particularly wholesale and retail trade, account for most of the increase in markups until 2018, while manufacturing, led by transportation equipment and export-oriented industries, plays a larger role in more recent years. Rising markups in services are associated with greater local labor market concentration, suggestive of increasing monopsony power. In manufacturing, markup growth is linked to higher capital expenditure, consistent with firms sustaining larger markups to recover higher fixed costs. Moreover, rising markups in manufacturing are positively associated with total factor productivity, whereas in services they are uncorrelated with productivity. Overall, these findings suggest that while market power has increased over time, its underlying drivers have shifted from monopsonistic power in labor markets to higher fixed costs, with more favorable efficiency implications in recent years.
Whether exporters can take advantage of increases in foreign demand depends on the scalability of their input suppliers—that is, suppliers’ ability to expand production when demand rises. Using bilateral trade data linked to international input-output tables, I measure supplier scalability at the country-industry level and examine how it shapes downstream export growth. I find that supplier scalability varies sharply across industries within countries, that scalable suppliers tend to be connected to scalable suppliers themselves, and that downstream country-sectors exposed to more scalable suppliers respond more strongly to positive foreign demand shocks in sectors with relationship-sticky inputs. I rationalize these facts in a multicountry, multi-sector general-equilibrium trade model with input-output linkages, heterogeneous upward-sloping supplier supply curves, and gradually adjusting sourcing relationships. In the calibrated model, supplier bottlenecks substantially attenuate the export and welfare gains from a global demand expansion, while relationship stickiness determines where bottlenecks bind. Counterfactuals show that supplier upgrading and pre-arranged access to flexible sourcing networks are most valuable when targeted toward economically central, relationship-sticky, and bottleneck-exposed parts of the production network.
Amid sharp house price increases in some parts of Europe, housing affordability has again become one of the main concern of households. This paper conducts three complementary sets of analyses to shed light on the drivers and economic implications of declining housing affordability. First, using a structural VAR, we show that supply-side factors have become increasingly prominent drivers of house prices—a notable shift from the credit-driven price increases that preceded the Global Financial Crisis. Second, drawing on household-level EU-SILC data, we argue that the burden has fallen disproportionately on lower-income urban renters, who face both rising rents and diminishing prospects of transitioning to homeownership. This is especially true for financially more vulnerable renters who have seen their probability of becoming home owners fall by more than half since the pre-GFC period. Third, we provide new empirical evidence that the resulting widening of income and wealth gaps between owners and renters is compounded by the efficiency cost of reduced labor mobility, as high housing costs make it harder for workers to move to more productive locations – quantitively, housing affordability constraints might have led to around one million foregone moves within the EU over the past decade. The analyses underpin the policy recommendations to alleviate housing affordability challenges set out in the IMF’s 2026 Euro Area consultation, including the need to focus on national measures to boost housing supply, with a complementary role for EU-level action.
We study how AI regulation affects firm valuation using the EU Artificial Intelligence Act, the world's first comprehensive AI framework. In an event study around the April 2021 proposal, we find firms combining deeper EU presence with faster AI hiring earned higher announcement returns, suggesting markets value “jurisdictional capital”—experience in the EU regulatory environment helps firms navigate the AI regulation. The effect is stronger for high-risk AI, for firms with stable and concentrated EU presence, or prior compliance experience, unexplained by size, foreign exposure, or lobbying. EU-embedded, AI-expanding firms increase within-firm EU revenue share when peers are less embedded.
This paper analyzes the credit-growth nexus by shifting the focus from aggregate leverage and credit stocks to new credit flows. Using quarterly data for 12 euro area countries over 2007–24, covering 96 percent of euro area GDP, the analysis shows a robust empirical association between newly granted bank credit and private final domestic demand (PFDD), a close proxy for GDP. A 10 percent increase in new private credit is associated with about 0.5–0.7 percentage points growth in PFDD. In contrast, specifications based on credit stocks or leverage produce unstable or counterintuitive estimates, reflecting measurement biases related to debt repayments and denominator effects. Nothwithstanding the importance of debt levels and leverage for financial stability and through debt service for the economy, the findings suggest that new credit flows appear to provide a more empirically reliable proxy for the macroeconomic role of bank lending.
Solar and wind power account for a growing share of electricity generation in China and now dominate new capacity additions. As the power system transitions toward renewable generation, greater flexibility will be required to maintain system stability. This paper uses a computable general equilibrium model to assess the macroeconomic implications of this transition. Model results indicate a modest increase in electricity prices in the near-term, followed by sustained declines as renewable shares rise, particularly when variability is managed through battery storage rather than coal-fired backup generation. While the transition requires substantial adjustments in electricity supply and investment, it raises GDP in the long run and strengthens energy security. Battery-based flexibility outperforms continued reliance on coal across multiple dimensions, even when accounting for rising electricity demand from emerging technologies such as artificial intelligence. However, this transition pathway also increases the risk of stranded assets in the coal power sector.
