Imf Engagement With Countries In Post Conflict And Fragile Situations Stocktaking

This review examines experience in implementing the lessons drawn in the 2011 Board paper on the Fund’s engagement with countries in post-conflict and fragile situations (more commonly referred to as fragile states (FS)) and the ensuing 2012 Guidance Note. The focus is on capacity building, Fund facilities and program design, and policy support. The review identifies scope to improve the Fund’s engagement in selected areas.

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.

In recent decades, the Middle East and North Africa region (MENA) has experienced more frequent and severe conflicts than in any other region of the world, exacting a devastating human toll. The region now faces unprecedented challenges, including the emergence of violent non-state actors, significant destruction, and a refugee crisis bigger than any since World War II. This paper raises awareness of the economic costs of conflicts on the countries directly involved and on their neighbors. It argues that appropriate macroeconomic policies can help mitigate the impact of conflicts in the short term, and that fostering higher and more inclusive growth can help address some of the root causes of conflicts over the long term. The paper also highlights the crucial role of external partners, including the IMF, in helping MENA countries tackle these challenges.

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.

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.

I welcome the report of the Independent Evaluation Office (IEO) on the IMF and Fragile States. The report recognizes that the Fund has made important contributions in restoring macroeconomic stability, building core institutions, and catalyzing donor support across a diverse range of countries in fragile and conflict situations. The IEO’s analysis and findings provide a thorough stock-taking and resonate with staff. Accordingly, I broadly support the IEO’s recommendations to make the Fund’s engagement with countries in fragile and conflict situations more impactful.

The paper draws on recent country experience to describe the approach to designing and implementing fiscal reforms in fragile states (FS) taken in the IMF’s technical assistance (TA). In doing so, it highlights how the TA that the IMF provides to FS differs from that of non-FS, describes the trends in and modalities of TA delivery, and draws on recent experiences to derive lessons for future work.