2026 ROC Review FAQ

Questions and answers on the 2026 ROC Review

Last Updated: September 24, 2026

Q1. Why is the Review of Program Design and Conditionality (ROC) happening now?

The IMF periodically reviews program design and conditionality to ensure that Fund-supported programs are effective in helping members resolve balance of payments problems and restore medium-term external viability. These regular reviews allow the Fund to look back and learn from program experience and look forward to how program design and conditionality may need to evolve to account for new challenges.
The 2026 Review of Program Design and Conditionality (ROC) identifies areas in which program design and conditionality can be enhanced to better support countries navigate a complex global economic environment marked by uncertainty, shocks, and major transformations.

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Q2. What are the key findings?

The Review finds that Fund-supported programs helped members navigate a challenging period:

Fund-supported programs responded with speed and agility to successive major shocks. During the pandemic, emergency financing and program augmentations helped 77 members sustain essential spending, protect vulnerable populations, and avoid sharp adjustments. When further shocks arose, programs were adjusted through augmentations, waivers, adjustors, and revisions.
Program experience shows that a front-loaded but realistic and sustained fiscal adjustment has been associated with a higher likelihood of program success. Social spending conditionality (SSC) expanded during the 2026 ROC period, reflecting greater attention to the impact of adjustment on inclusive growth and the need to protect vulnerable groups. In PRGT-supported programs, those that protected or expanded social spending were marked by more sustained implementation and higher degrees of success.
According to the 2026 ROC stakeholder survey: 90 percent of respondents view the IMF as a trusted advisor and most consider its engagement as timely, well-focused, and effective in helping members confront shocks.

The ROC also highlights areas for refinement. For example:

Revenue projections could have better reflected implementation challenges and capacity constraints, particularly in PRGT-supported programs.
Some reforms were delayed or reversed, particularly in politically sensitive or institutionally complex areas. The Review notes that the benefits of deeper structural reforms often emerged over horizons beyond a single Fund arrangement, underscoring the importance of prioritization, sequencing, and sustained implementation.
Earlier program engagement can help preserve the policy space needed to deliver more balanced adjustment, whereas delayed adjustment may ease near-term pressures but ultimately necessitate sharper corrections, amplifying the burden on the most vulnerable. This highlights the critical importance of timely engagement.

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Q3. What will change as a result of the Review, and how will countries benefit?

he Review updates and strengthens the IMF's existing approach to program design to help countries navigate a more shock-prone global economy through programs that are more coherent, realistic, adaptable, and effective, while remaining tailored to each country’s specific circumstances. Key benefits for borrowing countries include:

More realistic and better-tailored programs. Economic assumptions, policy choices, and reform sequencing that are more realistic and mindful of countries’ capacity – particularly for low-income, fragile and conflict-affected countries – helping create a more balanced policy mix and improving chances of achieving program objectives.
Greater flexibility in responding to shocks. Programs that make more systematic use of risk assessments, scenario analysis, and contingency planning, allowing policies to adapt more quickly to shocks or changing conditions.
More focused and impactful reforms. To avoid overburdening country authorities, reform agendas that focus on fewer but deeper reforms that are critical for achieving program objectives, and better integrated IMF capacity development to help countries strengthen institutions and deliver reforms.
Stronger and more durable outcomes. Programs that place greater emphasis on sustainable solutions to balance of payments problems through realistic financing strategies, better monitoring of implementation, and earlier course correction when circumstances change.

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Q4. Does the Review mean IMF programs will have more conditionality? Does it mean a return to a focus on fiscal austerity?

Based on program experience, front-loaded and sustained fiscal adjustment was associated with higher chances of program success. However, the 2026 ROC does not recommend frontloading of fiscal adjustment in all cases but, rather, takes account of country circumstances.
Where fiscal consolidation is essential to resolving balance of payments imbalances, the Review encourages frontloading only to the extent feasible and alongside realistic, and growth-friendly measures and adequate protection for the vulnerable. The pace and composition of adjustment should also reflect country circumstances, including political economy considerations and distributional impacts.

The Review further calls for a more balanced mix of policies, relying on both revenue and expenditure measures and a stronger role for monetary policy conditionality as appropriate, which would help reduce the burden on fiscal adjustment.

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Q5. Does the Review make IMF programs less demanding?

The objective is to improve implementation and outcomes, not to lower standards. Programs will continue to be anchored in the 2002 Guidelines on Conditionality and focused on resolving balance of payments problems and restoring medium-term external viability.

Q6. How does the Review fit into broader efforts to adapt and update IMF policy tools and frameworks?

This ROC is part of a set of major reviews that the Fund is undertaking to help member countries confront the challenges ahead, including the Comprehensive Surveillance Review and Review of the Debt Sustainability Framework for Low Income Countries.
It also builds on and complements other reviews on aspects of the IMF lending framework — such as reviews of the PRGT, charges and surcharges, and access limits -- to ensure the Fund’s toolkit is ready to support our members safeguard macroeconomic stability.

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Q7. How will the 2026 Review of Program Design and Conditionality be implemented?

Implementation will be phased, proportionate, and risk‑based, relying on refining existing guidance, enhancing tools, and leveraging ongoing workstreams.
Initial work will focus on updating the guidance note to map the operational implications of the recommendations and on developing new analytical tools, and templates.
Thereafter, the focus will gradually shift to country-level implementation, with country teams applying new templates to new program requests while ongoing programs incorporate them as relevant. End-program summaries will be prepared as programs conclude, alongside other applicable guidance.

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2026 ROC Review FAQ

Questions and answers on the 2026 ROC Review

Q1. Why is the Review of Program Design and Conditionality (ROC) happening now?

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Q2. What are the key findings?

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Q3. What will change as a result of the Review, and how will countries benefit?

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Q4. Does the Review mean IMF programs will have more conditionality? Does it mean a return to a focus on fiscal austerity?

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Q5. Does the Review make IMF programs less demanding?

Q6. How does the Review fit into broader efforts to adapt and update IMF policy tools and frameworks?

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Q7. How will the 2026 Review of Program Design and Conditionality be implemented?

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IMF’s Work

RESOURCES

TOPICS

Flagship Publications

Other Publications

IMF reports and publications by country

Regional Offices

ABOUT

TRAINING

PUBLICATIONS

All News

See Also

For Journalists

Press Center

RESOURCES

FLAGSHIPS

KEY SERIES

IMF NOTES