Chair’s Statement Fifty-Third Meeting of the IMFC
IMF News, April 17, 2026
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- Published: April 17, 2026
Global outlook and shocks
- The global economy has been tested by repeated shocks over the past few years from wars and conflicts, including the new one in the Middle East.
- The conflict in the Middle East is identified as a major new global shock; its economic impact will depend on its duration, intensity, and geographical expansion.
- Current observed effects include infrastructure damage and transport disruptions that pose a serious threat to the global economy; notable efforts to sustain energy flows include redirection of transport routes to enhance supply security.
- The impact of the shock is described as highly asymmetric across countries, "hitting the poorest and most vulnerable the hardest."
- If prolonged, the shock could:
- Keep fuel and fertilizer prices elevated for an extended period.
- Disrupt supply of key inputs.
- Amplify risks to energy and food security, global growth, inflation, and external sector accounts.
- Tighten financial conditions and produce possible spillovers to financial stability.
Policy priorities, macroeconomic framework, and monetary policy
- Priority: reinforce macroeconomic and financial stability while enabling strong and broad-based growth through timely, adaptable, and credible policies, effective policy coordination and multilateral cooperation.
- Central bank guidance:
- Central banks remain strongly committed to maintaining price stability in line with their respective mandates.
- Central bank independence and clear communication remain essential for policy credibility and keeping inflation expectations anchored.
- Fiscal policy guidance:
- Fiscal policy should be appropriately calibrated and anchored in credible medium-term frameworks to ensure debt sustainability.
- Where action is needed and fiscal space is available, temporary and targeted measures can help respond to the new shock, especially to protect the most vulnerable.
Financial stability, surveillance, and innovation
- Ongoing priorities to monitor and tackle financial vulnerabilities and risks to financial stability include strengthening surveillance of systemic risks stemming from:
- Artificial intelligence.
- Non-bank financial institutions.
- Digital assets.
- Emphasis on harnessing benefits of financial and technological innovation.
- Support for sharpening the focus of surveillance based on analytical rigor, evenhandedness, and tailored policy advice.
- Specific reviews and initiatives welcomed or anticipated:
- Finalization of the Comprehensive Surveillance Review to set future surveillance priorities.
- Review of the Financial Sector Assessment Program (FSAP) to strengthen macrofinancial surveillance in a focused, risk-based and cost-effective manner.
- Multipronged work on global imbalances, including enhanced integration of external sector issues into bilateral surveillance, refinements to the External Balance Assessment methodology, the Understanding Global Imbalances paper, and planned analysis on capital flows and stock imbalances.
Lending framework, program design, and capacity development
- Support for ongoing efforts to fortify the Fund’s lending framework:
- Look forward to finalization of the Review of Program Design and Conditionality (ROC) to enhance program effectiveness.
- Support for ongoing work on Monetary Policy Frameworks for Crisis and Near-Crisis Countries.
- Capacity development (CD):
- Support enhancement of CD—further building on the April 2024 CD Strategy Review—by integrating it with policy advice and program design and ensuring the sustainability of CD financing.
- Appreciation for donor contributions to sustain continued support.
Debt issues, restructuring, and support for vulnerable countries
- Commitments to support countries promoting stability and growth, with attention to low-income and vulnerable countries, fragile and conflict-affected states, and small developing states facing mounting debt and financing pressures.
- Debt restructuring and related initiatives:
- Continue commitment to improving debt restructuring processes, including under the Common Framework.
- Advance work at the Global Sovereign Debt Roundtable (GSDR) to ensure restructurings are delivered in a predictable, timely, orderly, and coordinated manner.
- Welcome the updated GSDR “Restructuring Playbook”.
- Call for enhanced debt transparency from all stakeholders, including private creditors.
- Encourage increasing support to countries with sustainable debt and a strong reform and growth-enhancing agenda by accelerating the implementation of the IMF-World Bank 3-Pillar Approach.
- Look forward to the finalization of the review of the Low-Income Country Debt Sustainability Framework (LIC-DSF).
- Call on members that have not yet done so to provide their assurances of additional subsidy resources to ensure the Poverty Reduction and Growth Trust’s self-sustained lending capacity.
Structural reforms, global imbalances, and trade
- Support advancing structural reforms to:
- Enable private sector-led investment.
- Increase productivity.
- Safeguard energy security.
- Elevate medium-term growth prospects.
- Commit to cooperate to address excessive global imbalances and trade tensions and to build more resilient supply chains through country-specific reforms and multilateral coordination.
- Reaffirmation of April 2021 exchange rate commitments.
Quota and governance reforms — Diriyah Guiding Principles
- Endorsement of the Diriyah Guiding Principles for Quota and Governance Reforms as a significant collective achievement and milestone in the Fund’s governance reform agenda.
- Key premises and principles (verbatim terminology preserved where used):
- "A strong, inclusive, and representative governance framework is fundamental to maintaining the IMF’s credibility and legitimacy among its diverse membership."
- "The IMF is a quota-based institution." Quotas determine mandatory contributions, voting power (together with basic votes), guide access decisions, and determine shares in a general SDR allocation.
- Voluntary financial contributions also play a role in providing financial resources to the IMF.
- Reference to Article III, section 2 (a) of the IMF’s Articles of Agreement regarding general reviews at intervals of not more than five years.
- The current quota formula was agreed in 2008; the January 2013 Report reaffirmed four underpinning principles of the 2008 formula.
- Membership has agreed to work to develop a new quota.
- The April 2025 Diriyah Declaration emphasized staged progress toward consensus and called on the Executive Board to develop general principles to foster convergence.
- Guiding principles for future quota and governance discussions:
- The IMF must remain a strong, quota-based, and adequately resourced institution at the center of the global financial safety net (GFSN).
- Voice and representation entail rights and responsibilities, including commitment to and effective support of the IMF.
- Reforms should support legitimacy, representativeness, effectiveness, financial and operational soundness, and the ability to promote consensus and cooperation while ensuring efficient deliberations.
- Reforms should be pragmatic, gradual, transparent, inclusive, widely acceptable, and reflective of the interests of the entire membership; discussions and decisions should remain anchored in IMF governing bodies.
- General reviews of quotas present opportunities to review adequacy of Fund resources and distribution of quota shares; adjustments must ensure resources enable the Fund to fulfill its mandate.
- Adjustments to quota shares should continue to be guided by quota formulas underpinned by the four 2008 principles, better reflect members’ relative positions, reduce representation gaps while protecting poorest members, and avoid excessive change in any single review.
- Any evolution in the size and composition of the Executive Board and the IMFC should ensure regional balance and protect representation of the poorest; "The 2025 Executive Board and IMFC should serve as a baseline reference."
- The selection process of the Managing Director should be open, inclusive, merit-based, and transparent.
- All quota and governance-related commitments arising from completed reviews and agreed reforms should be implemented by all members in a timely manner.
Institutional support, representation, and internal reforms
- Welcome the Managing Director’s Global Policy Agenda and underline the IMF’s critical role in providing tailored policy advice, capacity development, and financial support, where warranted, in close collaboration with other institutions.
- Reaffirm commitment to a strong, quota-based, and adequately resourced IMF at the center of the Global Financial Safety Net.
- Look forward to finalizing domestic approvals for consent to the quota increase under the 16th General Review of Quotas with no further delay.
- Welcome ongoing streamlining efforts at the IMF to deliver efficiency gains and best value.
- Reiterate appreciation for staff’s high-quality work under the IMF’s merit-based system and encourage further efforts to improve regional and women’s representation within staff positions, and women’s representation at the Executive Board and in Board leadership positions.
Meetings, attendance, and next steps
- Meeting date and location: Friday, April 17, 2026, Washington, D. C.
- Chair: Mohammed Aljadaan, Minister of Finance, Saudi Arabia.
- Managing Director: Kristalina Georgieva.
- IMFC members, alternates, and observers listed in the statement participated (names and roles retained in the original).
- Next meeting expected to be held in October 2026 in Bangkok, Thailand.
Chair’s Statement Fifty-Third Meeting of the IMFC, April 17, 2026.
Content in this bundle
- Understanding Global Imbalances (ppea2026006)