Suriname: Staff Concluding Statement of the 2025 Article IV Mission
IMF News, November 20, 2025
Source details
- Canonical URL
- Suriname: Staff Concluding Statement of the 2025 Article IV Mission
Other formats
Bibliographic details
- Published: November 20, 2025
Context and key message
- As Suriname celebrates 50 years of independence, it faces a critical juncture: macroeconomic stability has been restored in recent years and institutional frameworks improved, but the onset of a significant oil boom requires immediate action to build institutions to harness oil wealth.
- Priority: maintain a prudent fiscal-monetary mix, improve governance, and strengthen institutional capacity to ensure oil revenues are used efficiently and productively.
Growth, commodity outlook, and external sector
- Growth projections and drivers:
- Growth has been decent and is expected to continue at around 2-3 percent in the next few years.
- Gold production was disappointing in the current year.
- Economic activity expected to be increasingly supported by the development of the Block 58 oil project.
- Block 58 oil is expected to start in 2028 leading to a doubling of real GDP by 2030.
- External and balance of payments:
- The field development is import intensive and a large current account deficit is expected in 2026-28, financed by FDI inflows.
- Foreign exchange reserves coverage remains adequate as insurance against external shocks.
Macroeconomic risks and recent developments
- Fiscal and monetary pressures:
- After primary surpluses in 2022-2024, the fiscal position has worsened.
- Staff projects a primary deficit (on a cash basis and excluding a necessary central bank recapitalization) of about 1 percent of GDP in 2025 with a sizable increase in suppliers’ arrears.
- Pre-election fiscal expansion significantly reduced government cash balances; resulting liquidity injection pressured the exchange rate and boosted demand.
- Inflation increased from around 6 percent earlier in the year to over 10 percent.
- Monetary aggregates have grown faster than central bank reserve money targets since late 2024; central bank intervened to moderate currency depreciation.
Liability management operation
- Authorities executed a liability management operation centered on issuance of US$ 1.575 billion in 5- and 10-year Eurobonds.
- Proceeds financed a cash tender offer for some existing 2033 Eurobonds.
- Remainder held in an overseas escrow account to be used to buy back outstanding 2033 Eurobonds and some or all of the oil-linked value recovery instruments.
- Resources could also prepay bilateral debt and will finance some interest payments on the new Eurobonds.
- Purpose: shore up financing needed to service debt until after Block 58 oil revenues begin to flow.
Fiscal policy recommendations and public finance
- Urgent need to improve fiscal balance in 2026-7:
- Staff projects a primary balance of around 0 percent of GDP in 2026.
- A larger and more credible consolidation, with clear policy measures, would reduce depreciation and inflationary pressures and help meet monetary goals.
- Such improvements would create buffers against downside risks (example given: a 25 percent decline in gold prices could reduce fiscal revenues by 2 percent of GDP).
- Fiscal framework and budgeting:
- The government’s fiscal plan should be consistent with the recently legislated fiscal frameworks.
- A five-year fiscal plan should be submitted to the National Assembly alongside the 2026 budget, with both annual spending ceilings and a target for debt (net of Savings and Stabilization Fund assets), this year.
- Spending limits should be raised only gradually to allow improvement in execution capacity.
- Strengthen public investment management practices and implement the Public Financial Management Priority Action Plan.
- Operationalize the Savings and Stabilization Fund Suriname.
- Expenditure and subsidies:
- Electricity subsidies should be removed; automatic link between tariffs and costs of electricity production established in 2024 should be restored.
- Electricity prices should continue rising towards cost-recovery.
- Social assistance outlays have doubled over the past few years but show significant leakages; authorities reviewing programs to free up resources to expand coverage and raise adequacy of benefits.
- Consider using resources freed by the debt operation to reduce the stock of supplier arrears.
Revenue measures and administration
- Strengthen revenue administration and broaden tax base:
- Transition to a Semi-Autonomous Revenue Authority to improve collection.
- High international gold price may have increased smuggling; step up enforcement to ensure small-scale gold miners pay tax obligations.
- Excise taxes are low by international standards and should be increased and applied to a broader range of products.
Governance, transparency, and anticorruption
- Urgent need to strengthen transparency and anticorruption controls ahead of hydrocarbon revenues:
- Implement the new procurement law immediately: publish all tenders, procurement contracts, names of awarded entities and their beneficial owners, and names of public officials awarding contracts; require ex-post validation of delivery.
- Pass and promptly implement the amendment to the anti-corruption law to mandate declaration of income and assets of politically exposed persons, require verification and publication of these declarations, and establish dissuasive sanctions for non-compliance.
State-owned enterprises (SOEs)
- SOE reforms and safeguards:
- Financial operations of SOEs are not transparent; establish timely collection of necessary financial performance data.
- Non-performing enterprises should be closed or sold.
- For remaining SOEs, develop a broader roadmap to improve service delivery and safeguard public resources.
Monetary, exchange rate, and central bank operations
- Reorient policy to preserve price stability:
- Central bank should refocus on reserve money targets and establish clear reserve money targets for the coming year.
- Meet targets via open market operations regardless of interest costs of sterilization.
- Eliminate interest rate ceilings to allow market-determined rates and improve monetary transmission.
- Phase out issuance of central bank certificates to aid transmission.
- Use foreign exchange intervention only in response to disorderly market conditions (narrowly defined); review foreign exchange regulations including role of the Foreign Exchange Commission.
- Institutional and operational enhancements:
- Form a monetary policy committee to institutionalize decision making.
- Publish a Monetary Policy Statement following policy decisions and a quarterly Monetary Policy Report.
- Integrate data better, extend surveys of expectations, and improve forecasting.
- Improve high-level coordination between the central bank and the Ministry of Finance and Planning.
- Develop a strategy to transition to an interest-based framework, including introduction of a central bank deposit facility and development of an interbank market.
Financial sector resilience and supervision
- Strengthen banks’ internal risk management:
- Credit growth has been fast; monitor underwriting prudence, respect limits on net open FX positions, and ensure accurate loan classification.
- Create a comprehensive credit registry to track borrower financial positions and reduce data gaps.
- Operationalize the framework for bank resolution and develop contingency plans for downside scenarios.
- Central bank should be ready to provide liquidity to banks; undercapitalized banks without viable plans should be quickly resolved.
Structural reforms and business environment
- Improve business environment and address bottlenecks:
- Institutional reforms to manage the oil boom are critical to address developmental challenges.
- Key constraint identified by exporters and investors: government and regulatory inefficiency, especially bureaucratic delays.
- International experience suggests structural reforms (improvements in human and physical capital and the regulatory environment) bring larger benefits than industrial policies such as special economic zones.
Selected economic indicators (highlights from Table 1)
- Real sector (annual percentage change):
- Real GDP: 2024 = 1.7; 2025 = 1.3; 2026 (Proj.) = 3.9
- o/w Non-Natural Resource Real GDP: 2024 = 5.4; 2025 = 5.0
- Nominal GDP: 2024 = 14.8; 2025 = 18.1; 2026 = 15.8
- Consumer prices (end of period): 2024 = 10.1; 2025 = 12.1; 2026 = 8.6
- Consumer prices (period average): 2024 = 16.2; 2025 = 9.3; 2026 = 11.0
- Money and credit (annual percentage change):
- Broad money: 2024 = 13.9; 2025 = 11.6; 2026 = 10.6
- Private sector credit: 2024 = 16.0; 2025 = 28.9; 2026 = 10.6
- Reserve money: 2024 = 21.2; 2025 = 14.0
- Central government (percent of GDP):
- Revenue and grants: 2024 = 26.9; 2025 = 28.1; 2026 = 27.4
- Of which: Mineral revenue: 2024 = 10.9; 2025 = 10.5
- Total expenditure 1/: 2024 = 29.3; 2025 = 38.2; 2026 = 32.9
- Overall Balance (Net lending/borrowing): 2024 = -2.4; 2025 = -10.2; 2026 = -5.6
- Primary Balance 1/: 2024 = 0.3; 2025 = -6.4; 2026 = -0.2
- Primary Balance (excl central bank recap): 2024 = -1.1
- Deposits at Central Bank: 2024 = 9.2; 2025 = 1.6; 2026 = 1.2
- Central government debt: 2024 = 88.0; 2025 = 105.5; 2026 = 98.4
- Domestic debt: 2024 = 14.4; 2025 = 16.4; 2026 = 16.9
- External debt: 2024 = 73.6; 2025 = 89.1; 2026 = 81.5
- External sector (percent of GDP):
- Current account balance: 2024 = 0.2; 2025 = -35.3; 2026 = -51.4
- Capital and financial account: 2024 = -30.2; 2025 = -52.9
- Memorandum items:
- Gross international reserves (US$ millions) 2/: 2024 = 1,373; 2025 = 1,208; 2026 = 1,279
- In months of imports: 2024 = 6.4; 2025 = 3.3; 2026 = 2.8
- Escrow Account (US$ millions): 2024 = 851.9; 2025 = 680.9
- Exchange rate (SRD per USD, period average): 2024 = 33.05
- Notes: 1/ Expenditure includes central bank recapitalization of 9,381 Million SRD. 2/ Excludes banks’ ring-fenced reserves.
IMF staff concluding statement, November 20, 2025.