Motivation and approach. Last year’s major reforms of the Fund’s lending instruments, together with the commitment to treble its resources, made a significant contribution to global stabilization as Fund lending created room for policy accommodation and helped countries weather the worst of the crisis. While these reforms have yielded positive results, it is appropriate to ask—as the IMFC has—whether there is scope to build on this experience. This paper tries to answer this question, including by drawing on the lessons of the crisis, as perceived by policymakers, market participants, and academic observers, with whom Fund staff has consulted extensively. While every effort has been made to explore the pros and cons of various reform options neutrally, some options are clearly more evolutionary (e.g., those building on last year’s headline introduction of the Flexible Credit Line or FCL), while others are of a more radical nature (e.g., Fund provision of pure insurance payouts or collateralized lending). This paper focuses on the former, covering the latter set of ideas in a supplement. Once the Executive Board has had a chance to comment on all options, a more defined and specific set of proposals could be developed by staff for further consideration.

This paper reviews the design of conditionality in Fund-supported programs from 2002 to end-September 2011, with an emphasis on recent years. It focuses on the content and application of program conditionality—especially structural conditionality—in relation to the 2002 Conditionality Guidelines (the "Guidelines"), the Staff Statement on Principles Underlying the Guidelines on Conditionality, and subsequent revisions to operational guidance on conditionality. The analysis is based on the five key interrelated principles guiding the design of conditionality: national ownership of programs, parsimony in program-related conditions, tailoring to country circumstances, effective coordination with other multilateral institutions, and clarity in the specification of conditions. In particular, the principle of parsimony requires that program-related conditions be critical (or the minimum necessary) to achieve program objectives and goals, critical for monitoring program implementation, or necessary for implementing specific provisions under the Articles of Agreement (the "criticality criterion"). Beyond assessing compliance with these guidelines and principles, the paper also examines the implementation of conditionality

The audited consolidated financial statements of the International Monetary Fund as of April 30, 2019 and 2018

A recovery is underway, but the economic fallout from the global pandemic could be with us for years to come. With the crisis exacerbating prepandemic vulnerabilities, country prospects are diverging. Nearly half of emerging market and developing economies and some middle-income countries are now at risk of falling further behind, undoing much of the progress made toward achieving the UN Sustainable Development Goals.

Periodic Monitoring Reports (PMRs) were established by the Executive Board in January 2007 to ensure the systematic monitoring of those IEO recommendations that the Board has endorsed. The first PMR was discussed by the Executive Board in January 20081 and the second PMR was discussed by the Evaluation Committee (EVC) in November 2008.2 This third report updates the status of the performance benchmarks related to IEO evaluations covered in the first and second PMRs and listed in Periodic Monitoring Report on the Status of Implementation Plans in Response to Board-Endorsed IEO Recommendations, Table 5. It also updates the implementation status of the management implementation plan (MIP) for Board-endorsed recommendations stemming from the IEO evaluation of "Structural Conditionality in IMF-Supported Programs."

This report seeks to help the IMF enhance its effectiveness by identifying major recurring issues from the IEO’s first 20 evaluations and assessing where they stand. The IMF’s core areas of responsibility are surveillance, lending, and capacity development. The aim of this report is to strengthen the follow-up process by focusing on key issues that recurred in IEO evaluations, rather than on specific recommendations on their implementation. The IEO believes that a framework of reviewing and monitoring recurring issues would be useful in establishing incentives for progress, strengthening the Board’s oversight, and providing learning opportunities for the IMF.

With single-digit inflation and substantial financial deepening, developing countries are adopting more flexible and forward-looking monetary policy frameworks and ascribing a greater role to policy interest rates and inflation objectives. While some countries have adopted formal inflation targeting regimes, others have developed frameworks with greater target flexibility to accommodate changing money demand, use of policy rates to signal the monetary policy stance, and implicit inflation targets.