{
  "title": "Adapting the IMF to a Changing World",
  "publication": "IMF News, July 15, 2026",
  "sourceUrl": "https://www.imf.org/en/news/articles/2026/07/15/sp071526-adapting-the-imf-to-a-changing-world",
  "canonical": "https://www.imf.org/en/news/articles/2026/07/15/sp071526-adapting-the-imf-to-a-changing-world",
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  "summary": "Remarks at the Atlantic Council by Christian Mumssen, IMF Director of Strategy, Policy and Review",
  "publishDate": "2026-07-15",
  "sections": [
    {
      "heading": "A changing global context",
      "content": "- Recent major shocks: the pandemic, a cost-of-living crisis, escalating trade frictions, and wars in Ukraine and the Middle East.\n- Global inflation peaked at close to 9.5 percent in 2022.\n- Roughly four-fifths of the world's central banks were tightening monetary policy concurrently.\n- Demographic shifts: on current projections, the average age of the world's population will rise by eleven years between 2020 and the end of this century.\n- Environmental pressures: climate change intensifies and extreme weather events are becoming more frequent.\n- Technological change: rapid advances in artificial intelligence and digital finance.\n- Geopolitical change: movement toward a more fragmented, multipolar world.\n- Institutional strength: 191 countries have a seat at the IMF table."
    },
    {
      "heading": "Four guiding principles for countries and the Fund",
      "content": "- Preserve macroeconomic stability\n  - Stability is a precondition for prosperity; instability undermines private investment and growth.\n  - Key policy areas: sound public finances and debt, inflation control, growth and jobs, external balances, and financial stability.\n  - Numeric context:\n    - Fiscal deficits remain about 1.5 percentage points of GDP above pre-COVID levels.\n    - Global public debt is projected to reach 100 percent of GDP by 2029.\n    - For the median low-income country, interest payments on public debt doubled over the last decade.\n  - Emphasis on addressing large and rising imbalances in both surplus and deficit countries to avoid disorderly adjustment.\n  - Prudence and targeted policy responses; limits to what fiscal and monetary policy alone can achieve.\n\n- Enhance resilience\n  - Supply shocks and geopolitical tensions elevate economic security concerns.\n  - Between 2023 and 2025, the IMF counted more than 10,000 trade-distorting industrial policy interventions worldwide.\n  - Countries are responding by securing supply chains, diversifying economic relationships, and strengthening energy security.\n  - Financial innovation (non-bank financial institutions, digital finance) offers efficiency gains but introduces new channels for shock transmission and new risks.\n  - Need for adequate regulation, supervision, and risk monitoring.\n  - Crises lead to learning and stronger preparedness for subsequent shocks.\n\n- Manage uncertainty\n  - Projecting growth, employment, inflation, fiscal balances, and interest rates is increasingly difficult.\n  - Three clear lessons:\n    - Agility and adaptability are key to managing shocks and structural change.\n    - Policy credibility matters more than ever; preserve credible medium-term fiscal frameworks and firm commitment to price stability.\n    - Think in terms of scenarios, plan contingencies, and respond with agility when the unexpected arrives.\n\n- Enable the private sector\n  - Government roles: provide public goods, adequate social protection, and a stable enabling environment for private activity.\n  - Embrace innovation to raise productivity growth and help offset negative impacts from other shocks.\n  - Digital finance is enduring; AI could be as consequential as the Industrial Revolution with major implications for growth, employment, distribution, and geopolitics.\n  - Attention required to macro-financial impacts of technological transformations and to ensure inclusive distribution of benefits."
    },
    {
      "heading": "How the IMF is preparing: five priorities and institutional responses",
      "content": "- Five IMF priorities:\n  - Managing shocks and uncertainty and building resilient policy frameworks.\n  - Reducing external imbalances.\n  - Identifying and addressing debt risks.\n  - Guarding financial stability amid rapid financial innovation.\n  - Tailoring financial support to countries facing balance of payments challenges.\n\n- Major reviews and toolkit upgrades (five examples)\n  - Comprehensive Surveillance Review\n    - Reaffirms IMF core strength of safeguarding macroeconomic stability.\n    - Emphasis on greater use of scenarios and contingent policy advice; extend practices used in the World Economic Outlook to bilateral surveillance.\n    - Premium on tailoring advice to country circumstances given asymmetric shock impacts.\n  - Review of Program Design and Conditionality\n    - Found the Fund responded well and with agility during the exceptional post-COVID shock period.\n    - Going forward, increased emphasis on contingency planning and on fewer, more targeted, and deeper reforms.\n  - Updated Debt Sustainability Framework for Low-Income Countries\n    - Will better integrate domestic debt, recognizing it is now a growing share of the total.\n    - Aims to provide a stronger tool for assessing longer-term trends and trade-offs amid demographic, climate, and development challenges.\n  - Review of the Financial Sector Assessment Program (FSAP)\n    - Sharpening early-warning capacity.\n    - Stronger coverage of emerging risks: bank–non-bank financial institution linkages, technology, and cyber.\n    - Better integration of FSAP findings into country-level policy dialogue.\n  - Upgrading the toolkit for External Sector Assessments\n    - Motivated by rising global imbalances between current account surplus and deficit countries.\n    - Will evaluate how macro-economic trends, trade, and industrial policies interact to shape external balances and patterns of growth.\n    - Highlighted as a priority for both the G20 and the G7 presidencies of the United States and France."
    },
    {
      "heading": "Institutional role and closing observations",
      "content": "- The IMF will play its part but recognizes it does not have all the answers and must navigate uncertainty like all actors.\n- The Fund's universality (191 members) provides a common platform to identify problems and share solutions.\n- Ultimately, countries must anticipate, formulate, and implement appropriate macroeconomic policies and build domestic consensus; the IMF is there to help, convene, and guide.\n\nRemarks at the Atlantic Council by Christian Mumssen, IMF Director of Strategy, Policy and Review; July 15, 2026.\n\n---\n\n\n References\n\n- Christian Mumssen\n- France and the IMF\n- United States and the IMF\n- Speeches\n- PRESS CENTER\n- https://www.imf.org/en/home\n\nSource: https://www.imf.org/en/news/articles/2026/07/15/sp071526-adapting-the-imf-to-a-changing-world"
    }
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    "Published: July 15, 2026",
    "Recent major shocks: the pandemic, a cost-of-living crisis, escalating trade frictions, and wars in Ukraine and the Middle East.",
    "Global inflation peaked at close to 9.5 percent in 2022.",
    "Roughly four-fifths of the world's central banks were tightening monetary policy concurrently.",
    "Demographic shifts: on current projections, the average age of the world's population will rise by eleven years between 2020 and the end of this century.",
    "Environmental pressures: climate change intensifies and extreme weather events are becoming more frequent.",
    "Technological change: rapid advances in artificial intelligence and digital finance.",
    "Geopolitical change: movement toward a more fragmented, multipolar world.",
    "Institutional strength: 191 countries have a seat at the IMF table.",
    "Preserve macroeconomic stability",
    "Enhance resilience",
    "Manage uncertainty",
    "Enable the private sector",
    "Five IMF priorities:",
    "Major reviews and toolkit upgrades (five examples)",
    "The IMF will play its part but recognizes it does not have all the answers and must navigate uncertainty like all actors.",
    "The Fund's universality (191 members) provides a common platform to identify problems and share solutions.",
    "Ultimately, countries must anticipate, formulate, and implement appropriate macroeconomic policies and build domestic consensus; the IMF is there to help, convene, and guide.",
    "[Christian Mumssen](https://www.imf.org/en/about/senior-officials/bios/christian-mumssen)",
    "[France and the IMF](http://www.imf.org/external/country/FRA/index.htm)",
    "[United States and the IMF](http://www.imf.org/external/country/USA/index.htm)",
    "[Speeches](https://www.imf.org/en/news/searchnews)",
    "[PRESS CENTER](http://presscenter.imf.org/)",
    "[https://www.imf.org/en/home](https://www.imf.org/en/home)"
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  "generatedAtUtc": "2026-09-26T04:48:17.578Z"
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