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.
The Lebanese authorities have managed to maintain a measure of macroeconomic stability despite the exceptionally difficult circumstances and the heavy toll that the Hezbollah-Israel conflict and regional security developments have taken on the economy and living conditions.
IMF staff and the Mozambican authorities reviewed recent economic developments and held constructive discussions on reforms that could underpin a Fund-supported program.
The energy shock emanating from the war in the Middle East is weighing on the Marshall Islands’ economic activity and adding to existing cost-of-living pressures through higher fuel and electricity costs.
End-of-Mission press releases include statements of IMF staff teams that convey preliminary findings after a visit to a country. The views expressed in this statement are those of the IMF staff and do not necessarily represent the views of the IMF’s Executive Board. This mission will not result in a Board discussion.
Opening Remarks by Deputy Managing Director Kenji Okamura at the Fifteenth IMF-Japan High Level Tax Conference for Asian Countries
The Executive Board of the International Monetary Fund (IMF) concluded the 2026 Article IV Consultation with Samoa. The authorities have consented to the publication of the Staff Report prepared for this consultation.
The right choice between subsidies, vouchers, or in-kind distribution can help countries save precious resources
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
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 examines the effect of alternative digital lending—defined as digital credit provision by non‑bank financial intermediaries (NBFIs)—on bank and systemic risk taking and competition. The paper focuses on Sociedades Financieras Populares (SOFIPOs) which constitute a regulated and well‑documented NBFI segment allowing an empirical assessment of the relationship between digital non-bank lending expansion and bank outcomes. Using a quarterly sample of 53 Mexican banks and 8 of these non-banks for the period 2018Q1–2024Q4, we document that growth in alternative digital lending is associated with lower individual bank risk-taking and stronger competitive pressures, with the latter effect being stronger for small banks. Reflecting the moderate size of digital lenders in Mexico and the compositional reallocation between bank and non‑bank credit, overall systemic risk appears broadly unaltered by the entry of the new players.
We look at the effects of debt and primary fiscal balances on sovereign credit ratings through the lens of a simple model. We find that the ratings differ from the implications of the model in three important ways. They give much more weight to debt relative to forecast primary balances. They understate the effects of the difference between the interest rate and the growth rate. They give a very large role to country effects. For the same level of debt and forecast primary balances, they imply extremely different ratings across countries, and imply extremely different levels of debt needed to reach a given rating.
The paper examines opportunities for deeper economic integration between the EU and the Western Balkans and assesses their potential economic impact. It documents key non-tariff barriers to Western Balkan–EU industrial goods trade—covering regulatory, customs, and border-logistics frictions—amounting to around 8–14 percent ad valorem equivalent. Reducing these barriers, alongside deeper agri-food and services integration, could generate substantial gains, allowing the Western Balkans to capture roughly one-quarter to one-half of the economic benefits of full EU membership while supporting EU objectives related to nearshoring, supply-chain resilience, regional integration, and connectivity.
Using firm-level panel data on cross-border sales for 27 African economies (2002-2022), we study how the African Continental Free Trade Area (AfCFTA) reshaped firms’ international trade. Guided by a heterogeneous-firm model with two short-run channels, export-network history and capital adjustment frictions, linked through goods-services input linkages, we document that the 2018 signing raised the ratio of international to total sales by 2.7 percentage points (pp) by 2022. The gains were uneven: firms with prior export experience outside Africa gained 2.8 pp, versus 1.2 pp for Africa-only exporters, and goods-producing firms and those facing lower adjustment frictions responded most. Network history and adjustment frictions thus shape who benefits from continental integration and how gains propagate across the goods-services linkage, so that an intra-continental agreement disproportionately rewards extra-continental traders.
Domestic markets can be far from fully integrated within a country: Canada's interprovincial trade is half the size of its international trade. We estimate internal trade costs using bilateral flows across hundreds of products and sectors and decompose them into geographic and non-geographic components. Embedding these estimates in a multi-region, multi-sector general equilibrium model with input–output linkages and interprovincial migration, we find that removing all non-distance barriers raises real GDP by 6.8 percent in our baseline scenario, with the largest gains accruing to smaller provinces. We also identify services as the sectors generating the largest liberalization gains. Further, sequential provincial liberalization can generate a virtuous cycle, where a province's liberalization increases the gains from (and incentives for) subsequent liberalization for most other following provinces. Finally, we show that the potential gains from domestic market integration can offset the GDP losses from increases in external trade costs.
This paper examines the origins and evolving use of the concept of Gross National Happiness (GNH) in the Kingdom of Bhutan, and the relationship between measured well-being and macroeconomic indicators across four decades of data. The paper incorporates the 2022 GNH Survey, alongside substantially updated macroeconomic data capturing Bhutan’s experience through the COVID-19 pandemic, and the launch of its ambitious 13th Five-Year Plan (2024–2029). The evidence continues to show that Bhutan’s rapid increase in national income remains only weakly associated with improvements in measured happiness—a pattern that is suggestive of the Easterlin Paradox. The updated GNH index indicates continued progress in well-being alongside sustained economic growth. Drawing on the literature linking cultural norms to economic development, we argue that Bhutan’s cultural endowment is on balance an asset for its growth prospects. GNH exemplifies how a culture-neutral well-being measure becomes more effective for policymaking when assimilated to relevant local cultural norms and values.
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