IMF Opens Up: Partnerships with Donors a Win-Win

IMF Blog, March 18, 2010

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Technical assistance is one of the IMF’s core mandates focused on capacity building.
Areas covered: "macroeconomic policy, public financial management, tax policy and revenue administration, financial sector supervision, or statistics."
Functions: help member countries "identify weaknesses in policies and institutional frameworks, develop concrete reform proposals and strategies, and put together the nuts and bolts for translating the IMF’s policy advice into concrete implementation of reforms."
Technical assistance complements the IMF’s surveillance and lending, and "helps them pursue their broader developmental and poverty reduction strategies by strengthening their capacity in macroeconomic management."
Technical assistance complements "the broader aid and development efforts of other bilateral and multilateral donors."

Demand for IMF technical assistance was "high and rising" before the financial crisis and the crisis "and its after-effects have further boosted demand."
Demand is particularly relevant in Africa where "capacity building is essential in helping countries through the crisis."
In the wake of the global slump, external donors are "even more crucial to help us meet the rising need for technical assistance."

The partnership is described as a "classical win-win proposition":
- Donors and beneficiary countries benefit from "both the depth and breadth across countries of Fund expertise in its core areas."
- The Fund benefits from donors' expertise "in integrating interventions into their overall programs and managing them in a results-based framework."
IMF technical assistance is "demand driven" — provided only "upon request of the recipient country" with recipient involvement "from identification of need, to implementation, monitoring, and evaluation."
To attract and work better with donors the IMF has:
- "strengthened the governance and accountability of technical assistance,"
- "increased cost transparency," and
- improved "information-sharing through better dissemination of technical assistance-related information."

The IMF aligned its product lines with donors' "regional and thematic priorities" via:
- Regional Technical Assistance Centers (provide multi-topic technical assistance regionally).
- Topical Trust Funds (operate globally with a specialized topical focus).
- Bilateral trust funds (provide specialized technical assistance focused on specific countries and topics).
All technical assistance interventions are "prioritized and coordinated in a comprehensive allocation process that ensures the best use of resources and synergies to the benefit of recipient countries."
Recent and ongoing actions:
- Increased technical assistance under bilateral accounts.
- "Last year, we opened a new Regional Technical Assistance Center for Central America and Panama and started operations under the IMF’s first topical trust fund on Anti-Money Laundering and Combating the Financing of Terrorism."
Plans: "further expand our technical assistance through new and scaled-up, regional centers, as well as through more topical trust funds."

Alfred Kammer, March 18, 2010 — IMF Opens Up: Partnerships with Donors a Win-Win