Help in the Neighborhood: 'Just a Phone Call Away'

IMF Blog, March 25, 2010

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Authors: working through the nitty-gritty details, putting together the nuts, bolts.
Published: March 25, 2010

Regional technical assistance centers have gradually evolved to play a major role in IMF technical assistance.
These centers, which are largely donor financed, have become important vehicles for helping countries carry out economic reforms.
Their objective is to assist countries in designing and implementing their poverty reduction and broader developmental strategies and help countries integrate into the world economy.
Typical areas of support include:
- Strengthening public financial management to improve governance and transparency and facilitate donors’ use of budget support instruments.
- Improving tax and customs administration to create a more conducive environment for investment and growth, increase the resource envelope for poverty reducing spending, and reduce opportunities for corruption.
- Facilitating trade and enabling countries to take better advantage of globalization.

Each center is staffed with resident advisors whose mix of expertise reflects the technical assistance needs of the group of countries they serve.
The centers are close to the countries they serve and flexible in their delivery of services, making them well placed to handle reform implementation issues on a day-to-day basis.
Resident advisors at regional centers are able to develop deep knowledge of the circumstances and needs of the countries, including cross-cutting and regional issues, and provide intensive and constant follow-up on assistance delivered.
Beneficiary countries’ perspective: “They are just a phone call away” and will accompany the government all the way in implementing economic reforms, including overcoming practical obstacles by working through the nitty-gritty details and putting together the nuts and bolts.

Regional centers can naturally exploit economies of scale because neighboring countries typically have similar economic structures and assistance needs, enabling more help to be delivered at lower cost.
Regional centers promote the sharing of reform experiences between countries, allowing officials to adopt tried and tested best practices while minimizing reform risks.
Centers can further regional harmonization and integration efforts of beneficiary countries by:
- Mirroring groupings of relevant regional organizations and coordinating economic policies and harmonization of standards.
- Supporting collective regional initiatives (example below).

The dominant motivation for requesting a regional center in Central America, Panama, and the Dominican Republic was to use the regional center as a vehicle for regional integration efforts.
The region sought deeper economic integration and collective insertion into the global economy.
The center is set to support the countries’ push for integration, including:
- Plans for a regional customs union.
- Free trade agreements with other regions.
- Regional aspects of banking supervision and regulation.

One of the strongest features of the regional centers is their governance structure, which integrates all stakeholders.
All regional centers are guided by steering committees comprising representatives from donors, beneficiary countries, and other international agencies.
These steering committees:
- Help promote aid coordination and ownership of reforms, in line with the objectives of the Paris Declaration on Aid Effectiveness.
- Provide strategic guidance for the centers' work plans through a consultative process that helps build shared ownership of the assistance delivered.

At stakeholders’ request and given positive feedback, the IMF is seeking to scale up the regional approach to technical assistance by:
- Expanding the scale of operations of many existing centers.
- Opening new centers: in addition to the new center for Central America that opened in 2009, further plans include a new center in Central Asia and two additional ones in Africa.
When complete, the 10 regional centers will cover 102 countries, including all of sub-Saharan Africa.

March 25, 2010 — Help in the Neighborhood: 'Just a Phone Call Away'