IMF agenda builds on its Medium-Term Strategy

• Pages: 145-147

Page 145

The IMF Executive Board agreed on a new six-month work program through November 2007. The IMF will focus on strengthening the framework for its economic oversight of member countries, further defining its role in low-income countries, aligning IMF quota shares with members' economic size, and enhancing the voice and representation of low-income members in the institution. It will also work on a new income model to ensure long-term financing for its activities.

Page 147

During the next six months, the IMF will seek to modernize its economic oversight and better define its role in low-income countries as part of a sixmonth work program set out by Managing Director Rodrigo de Rato and agreed to by the IMF Executive Board on June 6.

Every six months, the IMF draws up a work program that prioritizes and sequences planned action on its policy agenda. The program for June-November 2007 focuses on issues vital to the global economy and on the IMF's internal workings, such as bringing member countries' voting shares into line with their weight in the world economy and developing a sustainable revenue model to finance its operations.

De Rato said that the Board should give priority to the most pressing issues while recognizing that the IMF's Medium-Term Strategy (MTS) targets a substantial number of areas for progress for the 185-member institution.

"We must build in particular on those elements of the MTS on which discussions are most advanced," he said in a meeting with the Board.

Safeguarding economic stability

Economic oversight, or surveillance, is the IMF's core responsibility and has become increasingly important in today's global economy. A central feature of the new work program is a stronger framework for surveillance: doing more to identify and respond effectively to threats to economic stability.

Accordingly, the IMF plans to update the 1977 Decision on Surveillance over Exchange Rate Policies, drafted after the breakdown of the fixed exchange rate system in the early 1970s (see pp. 148-49).

Related work includes a follow-up on the recent external evaluation of IMF exchange rate policy advice and a review of the IMF's first multilateral consultation on global imbalances, involving China, the euro area, Japan, Saudi Arabia, and the United States. On May 17, the Independent Evaluation Office (IEO)-set up in 2001 to...