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.
Washington, DC – April 10, 2026: The 2029 Annual Meetings of the World Bank Group and International Monetary Fund will take place in Abu Dhabi, United Arab Emirates, in October 2029, as decided in a vote by the Boards of Governors of the two institutions. The last time the Annual Meetings were held in the UAE was in 2003, when they took place in Dubai.
The Executive Board of the International Monetary Fund (IMF) concluded the 2026 Review of the Adequacy of the Fund’s Precautionary Balances
Mauritania: IMF Reaches Staff-Level Agreement on the latest Reviews under the Extended Fund and Extended Credit Facilities, and the Resilience and Sustainability Facility and on a New 42-Month ECF/EFF
IMF Holds Informal Board Briefing on Afghanistan, Iran, Lebanon, Sudan, Syria, and Tunisia
IMF Managing Director Kristalina Georgieva delivers a keynote address on the global economic outlook and policy priorities ahead of the 2026 IMF–World Bank Spring Meetings, followed by a conversation moderated by Michael Froman, President of the Council on Foreign Relations.
IMF staff and the São Toméan authorities had productive discussions on the third review of the economic policies underpinned by the 52-month ECF-supported program. Most quantitative targets for the third review have been met and significant progress was made on a range of macro-structural issues.
Rising defense spending requires difficult fiscal choices to avoid raising vulnerabilities, while post-war recovery hinges on policies to reduce uncertainty, rebuild capital, and help displaced people return home
Nonbank financial investors expand funding access for emerging markets, but their flows are highly sensitive to shifts in global risk sentiment
Widening global current account imbalances are best addressed by simultaneous domestic policy adjustments. Industrial policy and tariffs offer a costly fix with unreliable effects on imbalances.
Energy prices, supply chains, and financial markets are the main transmission channels, but the regional effects will vary significantly
The costs of fragility are high, but judicious economic policies can help foster trust and support economic stability and growth
Capital markets integration, expanding opportunities for workers, and bigger consumer markets will allow companies to grow faster
On March 20, 2026 the Executive Board of the International Monetary Fund (IMF) concluded the 2026 Review of the Adequacy of the Fund’s Precautionary Balances. This review took place on the standard two-year cycle, following the 2024 Review. An interim assessment of precautionary balances was conducted within the Review of the Fund’s Income Position for FY2025 and FY2026, concluded in April 2025 (2025 Update). Precautionary balances comprise the Fund’s general and special reserves. They are a key element of the IMF’s multi-layered framework for managing financial risks. Precautionary balances provide a buffer to protect the Fund against potential losses, resulting from credit, income, and other financial risks. In conducting the review, the Executive Board applied the rules-based framework agreed in 2010 and reaffirmed in 2024. Precautionary balances have continued to increase since reaching the SDR 25 billion medium-term target at the end of FY2024. The overall balance of risks and risk mitigants to the Fund remain broadly unchanged since the 2025 Update. Precautionary balances are expected to remain above the target, including assuming additional distributions to the Interim Placement Administered Account (IPAA) in coming years. Against this background, Executive Directors endorsed staff’s proposal to retain the current medium-term target of SDR 25 billion and the minimum floor of SDR 20 billion.
Against the backdrop of persistent and recently widening global imbalances, the paper presents a structured framework for understanding how domestic policies can influence current account positions by altering domestic saving and investment decisions. Staff analysis finds that traditional macroeconomic policies remain the dominant drivers of imbalances, but certain types of industrial policies could also play a role. Micro industrial policies—those targeting specific sectors or firms—generally have ambiguous and limited effects on the current account depending on their impact on aggregate productivity. Macro industrial policies—those deployed economy-wide and often paired with restrictions such as capital flow management measures—can materially affect the current account but come at a cost to consumption. Trade restrictions, often deployed to counter imbalances, would only meaningfully alter current account balances when used temporarily or to support higher public savings. Using scenario analysis, the paper shows how domestic rebalancing, undertaken simultaneously, across deficit and surplus economies yields both a reduction in global imbalances and higher global output. The report concludes that the future path of global imbalances will be largely shaped by domestic macroeconomic trajectories. Durable rebalancing is a collective endeavor: it requires sound domestic policy action across major economies and works best when countries move together. To help design such policies, the Fund is pursuing a multipronged approach by strengthening data, analysis, surveillance and dialogue across the member countries.
Low-income countries (LICs) are navigating a highly uncertain global environment shaped by shifting policies in major economies. Changes in trade, migration, spending priorities, and foreign aid are affecting LICs directly and indirectly. While lower food and energy prices and a weaker dollar have provided some relief, cuts in official development assistance are already weighing on many LICs, and tighter immigration policies could weaken remittance inflows going forward. Macroeconomic outcomes also remain highly divergent: growth is projected to rise from 4.8 percent in 2025 to 5.3 percent in 2026, but many LICs still face weak per capita income growth, high debt service burdens, thin reserve buffers, and tighter financing conditions. Building resilience and reinvigorating growth remain urgent. This agenda calls for continued fiscal consolidation in most LICs, with pace and calibration tailored to country circumstances, and supported by stronger domestic revenue mobilization, expenditure prioritization, and improvements in public financial and debt management. Monetary and exchange rate policies must remain focused on durably restoring price stability while safeguarding financial stability. At the same time, structural reforms to strengthen governance, improve institutional quality, and support private sector-led growth and job creation will be critical to rebuilding buffers and raising productivity. The paper also emphasizes that stronger macro-fiscal management and fiscal institutions can help attract more and higher-quality foreign direct investment by reducing policy uncertainty and improving investors’ risk-adjusted returns. By contrast, fiscal incentives should be used selectively and only where fiscal discipline and institutional capacity are already strong. International support, including concessional financing, capacity development, and IMF engagement, will remain critical, with scarce concessional resources best prioritized toward the poorest and fragile LICs.
This paper provides an update of the resource adequacy of the Fund’s concessional financing trusts. Poverty Reduction and Growth Trust (PRGT) finances remain adequate, broadly in line with expectations at the completion of the 2024 PRGT Facilities and Financing Review and the 2025 adequacy update. The lending outlook is largely unchanged, with projected additional demand in 2026-27 expected to offset lower-than-anticipated new loan commitments in 2025. While progress has been made in securing assurances from members under the framework to distribute GRA resources to facilitate the generation of additional PRGT subsidy resources, broader support is essential to reach the 90-percent threshold. On the Resilience and Sustainability Trust (RST), based on updated projections, there are sufficient resources to meet the demand pipeline at least through 2028. The RST’s reserves remain adequate and the interest rate cap for Group A countries remains appropriate, though risks have increased. The Catastrophe Containment and Relief Trust (CCRT) remains underfunded and its next comprehensive review provides an opportunity to address its financing challenges. The Heavily Indebted Poor Countries (HIPC) initiative is nearly complete, although Sudan’s progress towards the Completion Point continues to be delayed. Staff assesses that risks to the finances of the PRGT and RST are appropriately mitigated. Based on its assessment of the trusts, and pending the outcome of the planned CCRT Review and amid ongoing efforts to secure PRGT assurances, staff does not propose any adjustments or policy changes pertaining to the Fund’s concessional financing trusts.
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 December 31, 2025.
This CD Guidance Note provides a one-stop source of information and reference materials on Fund CD-related policies, practices, and procedures. In line with the Management Implementation Plan (MIP) on the Independent Evaluation Office’s (IEO) 2022 Evaluation of CD, this Guidance Note supersedes the 2019 IMF Policies and Practices on Capacity Development and serves to operationalize the recommendations of the 2024 CDSR. It also integrates relevant earlier guidance to staff related to CD delivery and management.
This paper quantifies the effects of increases in military expenditures on education and health spending using local projections and different strategies to identify exogenous changes in military spending based on data for 33 sub-Saharan African (SSA) economies over the period 1990-2023. Specifications with shocks identified through military spending surges and through a fiscal reaction function yield mixed results that typically are neither economically nor statistically significant. But instrumental variables estimates that tackle endogeneity concerns indicate that a one-standard-deviation increase in the share of military spending in total government expenditure reduces the shares of education and health spending by about 1 percentage point over the medium-term. The crowding-out effects tend to materialize sooner for health expenditures, likely because they have a larger discretionary component, while education spending is marked by rigidities. In addition, we find that military spending shocks tend to crowd-out health expenditures when access to international aid is limited, while there is no evidence of crowding-out when aid is relatively amply available. In contrast, it appears that overall debt levels and the state of the business cycle are not significant factors in determining the extent of crowding-out effects of military expenditure.
Understanding how policies can stabilize household welfare during recessions requires a framework that captures household heterogeneity, unemployment risk, and general-equilibrium labor market dynamics. We study a contractionary demand shock in a Heterogeneous-Agent New-Keynesian model with search-and-matching friction on the labor market (HANK–SAM) and compare the effectiveness of alternative income-stabilization policies. Using a common fiscal envelope, we contrast increases in unemployment insurance generosity, with targeted transfers to hand-to-mouth households, and universal transfers. Policy effectiveness is assessed through the aggregate consumers’ welfare, measured in consumption-equivalent variation units. In an economy calibrated to U.S. data, unemployment insurance yields the largest welfare gain per percentage point of fiscal cost, followed by targeted transfers, while universal transfers are the least effective. A temporary increase in unemployment insurance generates the highest welfare, as it combines immediate cash-flow support with insurance effects, disproportionally benefiting households with high marginal propensities to consume.
In this paper, we develop two complementary approaches for benchmarking the public debt trajectories of Low-Income Countries (LICs) to assess their dynamic stability. We compare the evolution of the overall public debt-to-GDP ratios of reference LICs with the historical experiences of other countries with similar characteristics, which are now further down the path of economic development and have not experienced public debt stress events. We rely on both direct comparison and a novel application of the synthetic control method (SCM). These public debt trajectories that are dynamically stable from a historical perspective can provide insights into debt sustainability analyses for LICs.
Determining the appropriate size of government remains central for fiscal sustainability, social protection, and macroeconomic stability. Wagner’s law, formulated in the 19th century, posits that government expenditures rise with income, yet contemporary evidence is mixed. This paper revisits the relationship between economic growth and government spending in Europe over the period 1990–2024, with particular attention to the Balkans. Using an instrumental variable strategy based on trade-weighted partner growth, we find no evidence that rising income systematically expands government expenditure. On the contrary, faster growth is associated with modest declines in expenditure, particularly for current spending, while capital outlays remain largely unaffected. These patterns are stronger in high-debt countries, suggesting that fiscal rules and debt constraints increasingly shape spending decisions. The Balkan economies largely follow these trends, though heterogeneity reflects transition dynamics and EU integration. Our findings imply that Wagner’s law no longer describes spending behavior in modern European economies. Policymakers should focus less on income-driven expenditure growth and more on strengthening fiscal frameworks, improving spending efficiency, and prioritizing high-return investments in infrastructure and human capital. These measures can enhance fiscal resilience while supporting public service provision and long-term development goals.
This paper evaluates the impact of Costa Rica’s adoption of SUPRES, a digital treasury platform that centralizes and automates cash transfer payments for social assistance programs. While most GovTech literature has focused on service delivery improvements, the effects of digitalization on treasury operations remain largely unexplored. Addressing this gap, we provide an empirical assessment of how GovTech reforms support treasury efficiency by improving cash management and reducing opportunity costs of borrowing for treasury. Using administrative data and survey evidence, this analysis finds that average lead times for the analyzed social cash programs fell with the adoption of SUPRES - from 9–13 days before the reform to 2-3 days after-, generating estimated opportunity cost savings for the Treasury exceeding USD 4 million, at a relatively low implementation cost, highlighting the strong value-for-money of this reform. In 2020, the pre-SUPRES opportunity cost was about 1.1% of total domestic short-term interest payments, underscoring the importance of digital treasury reforms for managing liquidity. Although the savings are modest compared to GDP, they are significant for treasury operations, especially during tight cash periods. Survey responses from administrative staff indicate enhanced operational efficiency, transparency, and inter-institutional coordination following SUPRES adoption. Beyond treasury efficiency gains, the reform also strengthens targeting, expands financial inclusion, and supports the diversification and resilience of the social payments ecosystem by enabling a multi‑bank payment model. Overall, the analysis shows how relatively low‑cost digital treasury reforms can deliver meaningful efficiency gains in cash management while generating broader operational and financial inclusion benefits.
Uncertainty in the foreign value of the US dollar affects the US banking sector and therefore, the US real economy. In this paper, I propose a novel ‘Exchange Rate (ER) Uncertainty Channel’ and show the effects of increased volatility in the trade-weighted US dollar index on the US banking sector. Higher volatility in the exchange rate leads to retrenchment by foreign banks from the US syndicated loans market (SLM). This entails a loanable funds supply bottleneck for US banks trying to finance their loans through syndicates. US banks respond with tighter credit standards in an attempt to re-allocate scarce funds. In response to a 1 standard deviation increase in ER volatility, US banks’ net interest margin increase by 10 bps annualized, whereas balance sheet contract by 2-3 pp annualized. This is consistent with banks exerting market power in the loan market while simultaneously shrinking their balance sheet. Both the price and volume effects are stronger for US banks with greater exposure to the SLM as measured by their loans-to-interest-earning-assets ratio. Thus, volatility in the US dollar is a ‘global risk indicator’ that significantly affects US banking lending activity.
