Imf And Fragile States

This paper proposes a comprehensive Strategy to strengthen IMF support to FCS in accordance with the Fund’s mandate and comparative advantage. The Strategy is a response to the Board-endorsed recommendations of the 2018 Independent Evaluation Office (IEO) Report on The IMF and Fragile States. To achieve these goals, the Strategy will benefit from additional resources reflected in the FY23-25 Medium-Term Budget, as per the budget augmentation framework discussed by the Board in December 2021. The Strategy also provides measures to better support staff working on FCS. Given the inherent risks in FCS engagement, the Strategy will be phased in starting in FY22, with implementation gradually accelerating between FY23-FY25.

This evaluation assesses the IMF’s work on countries in fragile and conflict-affected situations (FCS), addressing both (i) its engagement through surveillance, lending, and capacity development and (ii) the frameworks and procedures for its engagement. It finds that the IMF has provided unique and essential services to FCS to restore macroeconomic stability and rebuild core macroeconomic institutions as prerequisites for state building, playing a role in which no other institution can take its place. In this critical role, it is broadly acknowledged to have had a high impact. While the IMF has provided relatively little direct financing, it has catalyzed donor support through its assessment of a country’s economic policies and prospects. Notwithstanding this positive assessment, the IMF’s overall approach to its FCS work seems to have been conflicted. Not only has it failed consistently to make hard choices necessary to achieve full impact from its engagement in countries where success requires patient and dedicated attention over the long haul, but past efforts have not been sufficiently bold or adequately sustained, and the staff has tended to revert to treating fragile states using IMF-wide norms, rather than as countries needing special attention. The report proposes six recommendations to improve the effectiveness of the IMF’s FCS work: (i) to issue a statement of high-level commitment to FCS work for IMFC endorsement; (ii) to create an effective institutional mechanism with the mandate and authority to coordinate and champion such work; (iii) to develop comprehensive strategies for individual FCS; (iv) to adapt its lending toolkit to deliver more sustained financial support to FCS; (v) to take practical steps to increase the impact of its capacity development support to FCS; and (vi) to take steps to incentivize high-quality and experienced staff to work on individual FCS and find pragmatic ways of increasing field presence in high risk locations.

This paper provides background information for the IMF Board paper on “Building Fiscal Capacity in Fragile States (FS).” It presents case studies on IMF technical assistance (TA) and capacity development in the fiscal area, provided by its Fiscal Affairs Department (FAD), in collaboration with the Legal Department, in the following countries: Afghanistan, Haiti, Kosovo, Liberia, Mali, Myanmar, South Sudan, and Timor-Leste.

Setting macroeconomic policy is especially difficult in fragile states. Political legitimacy concerns are heightened, raising issues such as who the policymakers are, what incentives they face, and how the process of policymaking is likely to work under limited legitimacy and high uncertainty both about the macroeconomic environment as well as policy effectiveness. In addition, fragility expands the range of policy objectives in ways that may constrain the attainment of standard macroeconomic objectives. Specifically, in the context of fragility policymakers also need to focus on measures to mitigate fragility itself - i.e., they need to address issues such as regional and ethnic economic disparities, youth unemployment, and food price inflation. Socio-political developments around the world have thus pushed policymakers to broaden their toolkit to improve the effectiveness of macroeconomic management in the face of these constraints. The chapters in Macroeconomic Policy in Fragile States address these issues, both by giving an analytical context from which policymakers can build to answer the questions they face in fragile situations as well as by providing lessons drawn from empirical analyses and case studies. The first section of the volume discusses the interactions between political economy considerations and macroeconomic policymaking. The second section covers the private sector environment in fragile states. The third section focuses on macroeconomic policy, especially fiscal policy, monetary policy, exchange rate policy, external flows, and aid effectiveness. The last section explains the role of the IMF in fragile states and concludes by presenting case studies from the Middle East and from Sub-Saharan Africa. The contributors to the volume are economists and political scientists from academia as well as policymakers from international organizations and from countries affected by fragility.

Setting macroeconomic policy is especially difficult in fragile states. Macroeconomic Policy in Fragile States addresses the many issues involved and considers ways to improve the effectiveness of macroeconomic management in the face of these constraints.

High persistence of state fragility (a fragility trap) suggests the presence of substantial benefits from avoiding a fall into fragility and considerable hurdles to successful exit from fragility. This paper empirically examines the factors that affect the turning points of entering and exiting from state fragility by employing three different approaches: an event study, the synthetic control method, and a logit model. We find that avoiding economic contraction is critical to prevent a country on the brink of fragility from falling into fragility (e.g., among near fragile countries, the probability of entering fragility would rise by 40 percentage points should real GDP per capita growth decline from +2.5 percent to -2.5 percent). Also, strengthening government effectiveness together with increasing political inclusion and maintaining robust economic activity should help make exit from fragility more successful and sustainable. In the current environment (the COVID-19 crisis and its aftermath), the findings suggest the importance of providing well-directed fiscal stimulus with sufficient financing, (subject to appropriate governance safeguards and well-designed policies), and protecting critical socio-economic spending to keep vulnerable countries away from being caught in a fragility trap.

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.