This note aims to provide country teams with broad guidance on engagement with countries in fragile situations. The aim of the guidance note is to help staff maintain focus on issues specific to countries in fragile situations. While engagement should focus on the issues and principles laid out in the note, there is, of course, scope for staff to tailor engagement to country specific circumstances beyond proposed practices.
"This guidance note highlights the unique economic characteristics and constraints facing small developing states. It provides operational guidance on Fund engagement with such countries, including on how small state characteristics might shape Fund surveillance and financial support, program design, capacity building activities, and collaboration with other institutions and donors. The note updates the previous version that was published in May 2014. It incorporates modifications resulting from Board papers and related Executive Board discussions that have taken place since the March 2013 Board papers on small states, which provided the foundations of the original guidance note. Based on these inputs, five key thematic areas (G.R.O.W.TH.) have been identified as central to the policy dialogue: • Growth and job creation. With small states experiencing relatively weak growth since the 1990s, Fund staff working on small states should ensure an explicit focus on growth in both surveillance and program-related work. • Resilience to shocks. Small states experience higher macroeconomic volatility and more frequent natural disasters. Staff should be ready to advise on how to tailor macroeconomic policies to provide greater resilience to shocks and climate change. • Overall competitiveness. Options to improve relative prices may include exchange rate adjustment (where possible) or measures supportive of internal devaluation (if not), and efforts to improve the business climate, including through regional initiatives. • Workable fiscal and debt sustainability options. With many small states having very high debt burdens, reducing debt to manageable levels requires sustained fiscal consolidation with supporting policies and structural reforms. In cases where the amount of adjustment needed to restore debt sustainability is not feasible or adequate financing is not available, debt restructuring may be needed. • Thin financial sectors. Developing deeper and more competitive, yet sound, financial sectors contributes to macroeconomic stability and enhances the effectiveness of policy interventions while strengthening competitiveness by improving business access to financial services."
This note highlights the unique economic characteristics and constraints facing small developing states. It provides operational guidance on Fund engagement with such countries, including on how small country size might influence the use of Fund facilities and instruments, program design, capacity building activities, and collaboration with other institutions and donors. The guidance note draws on the March 2013 Board papers on small states and the associated Executive Board discussion. The findings of the paper and implications for Fund engagement with small states were presented to small states authorities during the 2013 Annual Meetings, as well as in regional IMF conferences with small states in the Bahamas (September 2013) and Vanuatu (November 2013). Series
This guidance note provides operational guidance on the Fund’s engagement with small developing states (SDS). It highlights the unique economic characteristics and constraints facing SDS, notably in a more shock-prone world. Building on advice that applies to the full membership, the note explains how the characteristics of SDS shape Fund surveillance, financial support and program design, capacity development (CD), and collaboration with other institutions and donors. The note updates the previous version that was published in December 2017.
This note provides guidance to facilitate the staff’s advice on macroprudential policy in Fund surveillance. It elaborates on the principles set out in the “Key Aspects of Macroprudential Policy,” taking into account the work of international standard setters as well as the evolving country experience with macroprudential policy. The main note is accompanied by supplements offering Detailed Guidance on Instruments and Considerations for Low Income Countries
This note provides operational advice and information to help staff implement the IMF Strategy for Fragile and Conflict-Affected States (FCS) approved by the Executive Board on March 9, 2022. Topics covered include (i) the new IMF FCS classification methodology, which is aligned with that of the World Bank; (ii) the preparation of Country Engagement Strategies (CES) that will be rolled out across FCS to ensure that Fund engagement is appropriately tailored to country-specific manifestations of fragility and/or conflict; (iii) advice on tailoring the thematic focus of Article IV consultations and Fund analytics to FCS, as well as on the prioritization, design, and implementation of capacity development (CD) projects in fragile contexts; (iv) guidance on making full use of the flexibilities of the lending toolkit; (v) guidance on engaging in specific FCS situations, including building accountable institutions to exit fragility, cases of rising fragility risks, active conflict, post-conflict, and addressing the impact of external shocks and spillovers; and (v) strengthening partnerships with humanitarian, development, and peace actors, in accordance with the Fund's mandate. Dedicated annexes provide additional information on the CES process, addressing good governance in FCS, program design, and country examples of Fund engagement in FCS.
This note provides operational guidance to staff on how to engage on social safeguard issues with low-income countries in both program and surveillance contexts. The note is not intended as a comprehensive guide, and should be used in conjunction with other operational guidance notes, such as those relating to conditionality and surveillance.
“Fragility”—the combination of poor governance, limited institutional capability, low social cohesion, and weak legitimacy—leads to erosion of the social contract and diminished resilience, with significant implications for peace, security, and sustainable development. This study reviews how the international community has responded to this challenge and offers new ideas on how that response can be improved. Based on that examination, the author seeks to convey the importance of addressing this phenomenon as a high priority for the international community. Chapters explore the nature of these obstacles to sustainable development, peace, and security; how the international community has defined, measured, and responded to the phenomenon of fragility; how the international response might be made more effective; and implications for the United States.
The year was marked by difficult challenges and milestone achievements. To reinvigorate modest growth at a time of uncertainty about a complicated global economy, the IMF membership endorsed a three-pronged approach of monetary, fiscal, and structural policies to get the world economy back on a stronger and safer growth track. Highlights of the IMF’s work during the year included entry into effect of its quota and governance reforms approved in 2010, which increase the Fund’s core resources and make it more representative of the membership; commitments for increased financial support, policy advice, expertise, and training to help low-income developing countries achieve the U.N. Sustainable Development Goals; analysis of the international monetary system; inclusion of the Chinese currency in the basket of currencies that make up the Special Drawing Right; and policy advice on the economic repercussions of mass migration of refugees from Syria and other conflict-afflicted states. The IMF Annual Report, which covers the period May 1, 2015 to April 30, 2016, discusses all of these issues, plus a wide range of policy matters that the Executive Board addressed during the year.
This paper examines the macroeconomic frameworks of IMF-supported programs with low-income countries from 2009 to 2022, focusing on how macroeconomic targets and their achievement differ between fragile and conflicted-affected states (FCS) and non-FCS. Key findings include similar program targets for FCS and non-FCS, optimism in all dimensions considered other than inflation, and no significant correlation between targets and outcomes. For variables other than inflation, country-independent targets equal to the mean or median outcomes of other programs outperform program projections as predictors of actual outcomes. This underscores the challenges in setting realistic, country and program-specific targets in IMF-supported programs with low-income countries. Finally, we discuss potential caveats, including GDP rebenchmarking, non-linear relationship between initial conditions and targets, and repeat programs. We do not study, and make no claims about, causality.
