Low-Income Countries
What has the IMF done to help low-income countries during the coronavirus pandemic?
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.
IMF Executive Board Completes the Fifth Reviews of the EFF/ECF Arrangements and the Fourth Review of the RSF Arrangement for Côte d’Ivoire
The Executive Board of the International Monetary Fund (IMF) completed the Fifth Reviews of the Extended Fund Facility (EFF) and Extended Credit Facility (ECF) Arrangements and the Fourth Review of the Resilience and Sustainability Facility (RSF) Arrangement for Côte d’Ivoire.
IMF Executive Board Concludes the 2025 Article IV Consultation and Completes the Sixth Review Under the Policy Coordination Instrument with Rwanda
On December 4, 2025, the Executive Board of the International Monetary Fund (IMF) concluded the 2025 Article IV consultation with Rwanda and completed the sixth review of Rwanda’s performance under the Policy Coordination Instrument and considered and endorsed the staff appraisal without a meeting on a lapse-of-time basis. The authorities have consented to the publication of the Staff Report prepared for the consultation and the review.
IMF Executive Board Concludes 2025 Article IV Consultation with Republic of the Marshall Islands
The Executive Board of the International Monetary Fund (IMF) completed the Article IV Consultation for the Republic of Marshall Islands on October 29, 2025.
IMF Executive Board Concludes 2025 Article IV Consultation, Completes Sixth review Under the Stand-By Arrangement, Cancels the Stand-By Arrangement, and Approves a Stand-by Arrangement with Armenia
The Executive Board of the International Monetary Fund (IMF) concluded the 2025 Article IV consultation,1 completed the sixth review under the Stand-By Arrangement (SBA), and subsequently cancelled the SBA and approved a new 36-month SBA with Armenia amounting to SDR 128.8 million (100 percent of Armenia’s quota in the IMF or about US$ 175 million).
IMF Reaches Staff-Level Agreement on the Fourth Review under Ecuador’s Extended Fund Facility Arrangement
International Monetary Fund (IMF) staff and the Ecuadorian authorities have reached staff level agreement on a set of comprehensive policies and reforms needed to complete the Fourth Review under the Extended Fund Facility (EFF) arrangement.
IMF Executive Board Concludes 2025 Article IV Consultation Discussions with The Kingdom of the Netherlands—Aruba
The Executive Board of the International Monetary Fund (IMF) completed the Article IV Consultation Discussions for the Kingdom of the Netherlands—Aruba and endorsed the staff appraisal without a meeting on a lapse-of-time basis. These consultation discussions form part of the Article IV consultation with the Kingdom of the Netherlands. The authorities have consented to the publication of the Staff Report prepared for this consultation.
How Stablecoins Can Improve Payments and Global Finance
New technology can foster innovation and financial inclusion, or cause fragmentation and turbulence in many countries
Better Economic Measurement Is About Wiser Use, Not Just More Data
Statistics are a means, not an end, that should serve the public by helping us see the world more clearly and make better decisions
Industrial Policy Can Lift Productivity—but Comes With Risks and Trade-offs
Potential gains in targeted sectors and overall are not guaranteed and depend on careful policy design and implementation
How Europe Can Capture the AI Growth Dividend
Artificial intelligence could boost Europe’s productivity, but gains will hinge on efforts to deepen the single market and the calibration of regulation
Policy Actions Can Reinforce Growth Progress in Many G20 Economies
Concerted action on economic reforms can help the G20 achieve the group’s collective growth ambitions, but the reforms with the biggest payoff vary across countries
Sub-Saharan Africa: Steady Growth Amid Fiscal Challenges
Increasing government revenue and better managing debt can help foster resilience and accelerate growth
Fifteenth Periodic Monitoring Report on the Status of Managment Implementation Plans in Response to Board-Endorsed IEO Recommendations
The 15th Periodic Monitoring Report (PMR) on the Status of Management Implementation Plans (MIPs) in Response to Board-endorsed Independent Evaluation Office (IEO) Recommendations assesses the progress made over the past year on 48 actions contain in 11 MIPs. Over the past year, substantial progress has been made in implementing management actions with the closure of 24 actions, and these closed actions are a balance of strategic and operational actions.
Extension of the Period for Consent to Increase Quotas under the Sixteenth General Review of Quotas and to the NAB Rollback
On November 7, 2025, the IMF’s Executive Board approved another six-month extension of the period to consent to the quota increase and to the New Arrangements to Borrow (NAB) rollback under the Sixteenth General Review of Quotas (GRQ), through May 15, 2026. Such extension also extends the period of consent for quota increases under the 14th GRQ. The previous deadline was due to expire on November 15, 2025. However, the Board of Governors Resolution 79-1 provides that the Executive Board may extend the period for consent as it may determine.
Central Bank Digital Currency: Further Navigating Challenges and Risks
This paper informs the Executive Board about recent developments in central bank digital currency (CBDC), and summarizes the key messages and findings from the third wave of CBDC virtual Handbook chapters published in November 2025. Both retail (rCBDC) and wholesale (wCBDC) CBDC explorations are advancing, with wholesale projects gaining prominence. Countries are in various stages of CBDC development, ranging from near-term issuance to pausing rCBDC efforts due to limited domestic needs. This set of six Handbook chapters covers macro-financial topics including the implications of rCBDCs for (1) financial stability and (2) payments competition; legal and regulatory themes such as (3) selected legal considerations and (4) financial integrity. It draws lessons from (5) payment ecosystem resilience in fragile and conflict-affected states for CBDC, and also sheds light on the emerging area of (6) tokenized reserves. The Handbook, financially supported by the Government of Japan, provides technical frameworks and guidance for policymakers especially in emerging markets, to assess CBDC’s potential and tradeoffs. It is not intended to evaluate CBDC’s overall appropriateness, which is left to policymakers given domestic circumstances.
Review of the Cumulative Access Limits under the Rapid Credit Facility
This paper reviews the cumulative access limits (CALs) under the Rapid Credit Facility (RCF) of the PRGT. As part of its pandemic response in 2020, the Fund temporarily increased annual and cumulative access limits by 50 percent of quota under its emergency financing instruments, the RCF and the Rapid Financing Instrument (RFI). The pre-pandemic CALs under the RFI were already restored on July 1, 2024. Staff proposed and the Board approved on November 7, 2025, a two-step, time bound reversion of RCF CALs to pre pandemic levels. Specifically, the current CALs for RCF exogenous shock (ES) and large natural disaster (LND) windows would remain in place for another year, followed by a 25 percent of quota reduction on January 1, 2027, and another 25 percent of quota a year later. This would restore CALs under the RCF ES and LND windows to their pre-pandemic levels of 100 and 133.33 percent of quota by the start of 2028. This time-bound, phased approach would provide predictability for the return of RCF CALs to pre-pandemic levels while retaining adequate borrowing space for most LICs to cope with unexpected exogenous shocks. For RCF food shock window (FSW) users, the additional 25 percent of quota would remain until end-2029, aligned with the timing of repayments.
Debt Vulnerabilities in Low-Income Countries Recent Developments and Trends
Despite significant efforts to unwind the impact of the COVID-19 fiscal stimulus and other shocks, debt levels in many Low-Income Countries (LICs) remain relatively high, with debt vulnerabilities exacerbated by uncertain global conditions and a changing creditor landscape. In this context, the purpose of this paper is to provide factual data and insights on recent trends in public debt vulnerabilities and financing challenges in LICs, with a special focus on domestic debt issues. The evidence presented, particularly on the ever more important role of domestic debt as a source of public financing, highlights the importance of the continued work of the IMF and the World Bank to monitor debt vulnerabilities and support countries through a combination of policy advice, financial resources, and capacity building. Furthermore, the scale of identified vulnerabilities reinforces the need for strong debt management and enhanced debt transparency to sustain good relations with creditors and underpin sound financing decisions.
Development Committee: The Managing Director's Written Statement
The global economy is undergoing a profound transformation, and uncertainty runs high. The outlook points to dim growth prospects, both in the short and the medium term, though with notable variations across countries and regions. Low-income developing countries (LIDCs) face specific challenges, including high debt vulnerabilities, a dearth of external financing flows, cuts to official aid, and more restrictive immigration policies. The world’s poorest economies are particularly at risk of seeing their growth momentum decelerate and their per capita income gap relative to advanced economies widen. At the current conjuncture of sweeping policy shifts, heightened uncertainty, and weak medium-term growth prospects, it is crucial to implement credible and sustainable policy actions, build resilience against shocks, safeguard macroeconomic and financial stability, and undertake structural reforms to unlock private sector-led growth. Specifically for LIDCs, strengthening capacity to mobilize domestic resources and implement growth-enhancing reforms is crucial, while, in parallel, donors should explore ways to mobilize more development assistance.
The Importance of Diagnostic Expectations in Open Economies
We develop and estimate a parsimonious New-Keynesian small open-economy model that incorporates Diagnostic Expectations (DE)—a behavioral alternative to Rational Expectations (RE). Under DE, agents systematically overreact to new information, generating additional endogenous volatility. Our empirical analysis provides robust support for the DE framework: it fits Canadian data significantly better than the nested RE benchmark and improves forecasts of key macroeconomic variables, including real GDP growth, even during crises such as the Global Financial Crisis. These gains arise because DE reshapes the transmission of shocks, amplifying their effects and strengthening the exchange-rate channel of monetary policy. As a result, the relative importance of structural shocks shifts—with greater roles for supply shocks—and policymakers face a meaningfully worse inflation–output volatility trade-off. Taken together, our results highlight the relevance of behavioral expectations for open-economy dynamics and policy design.
Cutting Emissions, Securing Energy: A Macroeconomic Assessment for COP30
Climate change poses significant macroeconomic challenges due to its impacts and the energy transition needed to address it. Despite the Paris Agreement’s goal to keep global warming ‘well below 2°C’, and ideally to 1.5°C, the world is not on track. Temperatures are likely to pass 1.5°C this decade and would exceed 2°C by 2050, even if national targets are met. Limiting the ‘overshoot’ in peak temperatures by cutting global emissions of greenhouse gases would reduce climate risks. But current national emissions targets fall short, aiming for a 7 percent cut compared to the 30 to 45 percent needed by 2035. Using in-house models, we illustrate options and impacts of closing gaps to align emissions with temperature goals while minimizing climate risks. However, achieving these targets implies drastic changes in the energy system. Ensuring security of energy supply, which is critical for macroeconomic stability and growth, entails effective macroeconomic policies.
Demographics and Consumption in Asia Toward 2050
What are the implications of demographics on total consumption and its sectoral composition in Asia toward 2050? Although the literature has studied total consumption and individual consumption categories separately, the research that studies both is scarce. Using household consumption surveys from seven Asian economies and UN population projections, we find that (1) the compositional effects of demographics on total consumption can be large when middle-aged population changes rapidly, (2) due to aging, some categories, including education and transport, may grow slower than others, like health, and (3) the implications are uncertain due to factors like economic growth, fertility, and migration.
The Impact of Temperature and Rainfall Volatility on Food Prices—Evidence for Uganda
While Uganda has been exposed to an increase in the frequency of extreme weather events— most commonly localised flooding, leeching and mudslides associated with increased intensity of rainfall – changes in the aggregate level patterns of rainfall and temperature have been relatively modest and have evolved relatively slowly. As a consequence, it is unsurprising that conventionally measured weather variation appears to have a modest impact on food prices at the aggregate level. Instead, this paper uses highly granular earth-observation weather data in combination with spatially disaggregated price data to examine the impact of spatial and temporal variability in rainfall and temperature on the short-run price dynamics of domestically produced staple food crops in Uganda. We find that measures of weather variability computed across the agricultural cycle do impact the evolution of prices for locally-produced agricultural commodities, but the estimated effects are fragile and relatively small. Hence, a failure to reflect these effects in near-term forecasting to inform inflation models is unlikely to lead to significantly larger forecast errors.
Inequality, Household Debt, and the Role of Social Protection in Thailand
This study examines the nexus between inequality, household debt, and social protection in Thailand, focusing on their interrelation during the COVID-19 shock. Using data from the Thailand Household Socio-Economic Surveys of 2019, 2021, and 2023, we apply the Recentered Influence Function regression and decomposition method to identify the drivers of inequality in Thailand and demonstrate how the pandemic, despite its severe economic impact, led to a decline in income inequality through these drivers. Our analysis highlights the role of social protection, showing that social assistance helped reduce income inequality, while social insurance exerted the opposite effect in Thailand. Additionally, we investigate how income inequality and disparities in acess to social protection affected household debt dynamics during the pandemic. Our findings show that lower-income households were more likely to be indebted following the pandemic, possbly reflecting increased income shortfalls. Social assistance alleviated the pandemic’s effects on household debt by easing income constraints, whereas social insurance exacerbated them.
A Search-Based Theory of Mergers and Acquisitions
We develop a search-based theory of mergers and acquisitions with heterogeneous firms and endogenous search complementarities. We use this model to understand how merger incentives and the firm size distribution interact. In equilibrium, search costs and entry rates determine search intensities and shape the distribution of market power. We derive the law of motion of the firm size distribution, provide closed-form solutions, and solve for endogenous search efforts. Finally, we derive the aggregate welfare function and show how our framework can be used to simulate the impact of various antitrust policies. In particular, antitrust policy can have large effects on welfare due to the existence of multiple equilibria.
Promoting Climate-Resilient and Green Development in Africa | Africa Perspectives
A conversation on how sub-Saharan Africa can promote climate-resilient and green development. African Department director Abebe Aemro Selassie hosts the premiere episode of Africa Perspectives.
Zambia: Towards a More Resilient and Inclusive Future
A discussion with University of Zambia students on how Zambia is making progress in its reform efforts to restore sustainability, invest in youth, combat corruption, and attract investment and the role of the IMF.
Strengthening Institutions for Sustainable Growth in the Post-COVID World
The conference provides an opportunity to discuss how South Asia can build on its development success in the aftermath of the COVID-19 pandemic and geopolitical tensions to achieve its potential.
The Resilience and Sustainability Trust - A Dialogue with Countries
A discussion on how the Resilience and Sustainability Trust fits wider climate objectives at the country and global level.
Regional Economic Outlook for the Middle East and North Africa, October 2022
Jihad Azour, Director of the Middle East and Central Asia Department, presents the IMF’s latest economic outlook and growth projections for the MENA region
Living on the Edge: IMF Outlook for sub-Saharan Africa Nairobi Launch
A presentation and discussion of the October 2022 Regional Economic Outlook for Sub-Saharan Africa.
Developing Economies Seminars
FCDO/IMF Project
