A. The IMF provides technical assistance in its areas of core expertise: macroeconomic policy, tax policy and revenue administration, expenditure management, monetary policy, the exchange rate system, financial sector sustainability, and macroeconomic and financial statistics. In recent years the IMF has focused its TA in areas that strengthen the international financial system.
A. The recipient country is fully involved in the entire process of technical assistance, from identification of need, to implementation, monitoring, and evaluation.
The IMF delivers technical assistance in various ways:
• through staff missions of limited duration sent from headquarters,
• the placement of experts and/or resident advisors for periods ranging from a few weeks to a few years.
• technical and diagnostic studies, training courses, seminars, workshops, and "on-line" advice and support.
The IMF operates six regional technical assistance centers—in the Pacific; the Caribbean; East, West and Central Africa; and in the Middle East. In addition to training offered at the IMF Institute in Washington D.C., the IMF also offers courses, workshops, and seminars for country officials through a network of seven regional training institutes and programs.
A. Technical assistance is one of the benefits of IMF membership. It is provided largely free of charge to any requesting member country, within IMF resource constraints. About 80 percent of IMF technical assistance goes to low and lower-middle income countries.
Significant technical assistance is provided to countries that are in post-conflict recovery or other fragile situations, in order to help these states rebuild institutions for effective policymaking. This accounts for about one-fifth of all IMF technical assistance.
Close cooperation between staff members at headquarters and those in the field in identifying and prioritizing country needs in the context of overall excess demand is important to ensuring successful assistance.
A. Technical assistance accounts for about one-fifth of the IMF's operating budget. In the 2007 fiscal year (May 2006—April 2007), that accounted for close to $200m in costs. It is financed by both internal and external resources, the latter comprising funds from bilateral and multilateral donors. Such cooperation and resource sharing with external donors has a number of benefits: it leverages the internal resources available for technical assistance, helps avoid duplication of advice by different donors, and strengthens collaboration with donors and other technical assistance providers.
A. The IMF already has a very limited TA charging policy. In application, it has attached payment in only very few cases (mainly high-income countries). Quite apart from these mandatory charges, many higher-income countries have also begun to voluntarily reimburse the IMF for TA provided.
Nevertheless, as part of an ongoing strategic review of the role of the IMF, a Committee was established to study sustainable long-term financing of the IMF. One option considered by the Committee in its report was to charge for services provided directly to members. While this would yield only modest amounts, the Committee believed that charges would serve to better relate actual demand with supply and enhance the efficiency of providing these services.
A. Donors could provide assistance to defray costs for countries unable to afford the charges. The IMF Executive Board is considering the Committee’s proposals on TA in its ongoing discussions relating to the IMF’s income and expenditure model, and is expected to discuss the charging issue in Spring 2008.
A. Bilateral donors to the IMF's technical assistance program include Australia, Austria, Belgium, Brazil, Canada, China, Denmark, Finland, France, Germany, India, Ireland, Italy, Japan, the Republic of Korea, Luxembourg, the Netherlands, New Zealand, Norway, Portugal, Russia, Singapore, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, the United Kingdom, and the United States. Multilateral donors include the African Development Bank, the Arab Monetary Fund, the Asian Development Bank, the European Commission, the European Investment Bank, the Inter-American Development Bank, the United Nations, the United Nations Development Program (UNDP), and the World Bank. In FY 2007, external financing accounted for approximately 15 percent of the IMF's total technical assistance budget, comprising both direct technical assistance delivery and internal governance and support costs.
IMF EXTERNAL RELATIONS DEPARTMENT
