With the 2011 TSR laying out a wide ranging agenda for surveillance reform, the 2014 review will take a more narrowly focused approach and be mindful of the need to make cost-neutral recommendations. The themes and associated outputs will cover areas that address the IMF’s core mandate of ensuring the stability of the international monetary system, provide the most value-added for the membership, and leverage the Fund’s comparative advantages. The review will be based on: (i) a review and analysis of Article IV reports and multilateral surveillance products; (ii) guidance from an External Advisory Group at key stages of the exercise; (iii) background studies; and (iv) surveys and interviews with country authorities, staff, and other stakeholders. A review of the Financial Sector Assessment Program (FSAP) will be conducted separately but concurrently with the TSR, with close coordination between the relevant authoring teams. The TSR will also take into account the findings of other recent work, including the progress report on the implementation of the Financial Surveillance Strategy, the range of papers on debt issues, the LIC pilot on financial depth and macroeconomic policy, the set of Board papers on the experience with unconventional monetary policies and the challenges of exit from these policies, and the planned discussion of communication issues with the Executive Board.
The Fund has a range of modalities and tools to cover spillovers. However, there remains scope to enhance synergies between global and country-specific spillover coverage and to foster cross-country dialogue. Practical guidance and enhanced information-sharing would also allow for more systematic surveillance of spillovers. Furthermore, the COVID-19 pandemic has underscored the need to continue expanding the research frontier covering new spillovers and channels and developing new tools and data sets. Therefore, filling these remaining gaps in the Fund’s spillover work would allow for a more coordinated and evenhanded surveillance of spillovers.
The framework guiding the IMF’s communications—established by the Executive Board in 2007—has enabled the institution to respond flexibly to the changing global context. The framework is based on four guiding principles: (i) deepening understanding and support for the Fund’s role and policies; (ii) better integrating communications into the IMF’s daily operations; (iii) raising the impact of new communications materials and technologies; and (iv) rebalancing outreach efforts to take account of different audiences. In addition, greater emphasis has been placed on strengthening internal communications to help ensure institutional coherence in the Fund’s outreach activities. Continued efforts are needed to strengthen communications going forward. Several issues deserve particular attention. First, taking further steps to ensure clarity and consistency in communication in a world where demand for Fund services continues to rise. Second, doing more to assess the impact of IMF communications and thus better inform efforts going forward. Third, engaging strategically and prudently with new media—including social media.
The Fund has taken important steps to enhance its external sector assessments since the launch of the External Balance Assessment (EBA) methodology and the External Sector Report (ESR) in 2012, which provides a multilaterally consistent assessment of the largest economies’ external sector positions and policies. With scope for strengthening external sector assessments of non-EBA countries, the 2014 Triennial Surveillance Review (TSR) called for the application of EBA’s conceptual innovations to a broader set of countries. Following the 2014 TSR, the Managing Director’s Action Plan proposed developing EBA-lite to extend the EBA methodology to a broader group of countries where adequate data is available. In the fall of 2014, the launch of the EBA-lite methodology for current account assessments provided the first extension of EBA approach for non-EBA countries. In summer 2015, the real exchange rate index model and the external sustainability approach were added to the EBA-lite framework. This note serves as a reference for the EBA-lite methodology. It provides: (i) motivations for developing EBA-lite and guidance for its use; (ii) technical explanations of all three EBA-lite approaches; and (iii) suggestions on how to articulate staff assessments of the external sector informed by model results.
This paper dives into the Fund’s historical coverage of cross-border spillovers in its surveillance. We use a state-of-the-art deep learning model to analyze the discussion of spillovers in all IMF Article IV staff reports between 2010 and 2019. We find that overall, while the discussion of spillovers decreased over time, it was pronounced in the staff reports of some systemically important economies and during periods of global spillover events. Spillover discussions were more prominent in staff reports covering advanced and emerging market economies, possibly reflecting their role as sources of global spillovers. The coverage of spillovers was higher in the context of the real, financial, and external sectors. Also, countries with larger economies, higher trade and capital account openess and lower inflation are more likely to discuss spillovers in their Article IV staff reports.