Ieo Evaluation Of Multilateral Surveillance Evaluation Summary Pamphlet

The Independent Evaluation Office (IEO) was established by the IMF's Executive Board in 2001. It provides objective and independent evaluation of issues related to the IMF. the IEO operates independently of IMF management and at arm's length from the IMF Executive Board. for more information on the IEO's activities, visit the IEO website: www.ieo-imf.org.

This report updates the 2009 IEO evaluation of IMF Involvement in International Trade Policy Issues. Since then, the composition and structure of international trade have evolved, but trade has not regained its former dynamism. With increasing concern about potential winners and losers from trade, there has been a loss of political support for globalization, increasing trade tensions and protectionism, and the institutional framework supporting multilateral trade has come under heavy strain. The report concludes that overall the IMF deserves considerable credit for its active and timely response, playing a prominent role in championing commitment to an open, rules-based multilateral trading system. The Fund has largely implemented the recommendations of the 2009 evaluation and has strengthened and consolidated its trade policy analysis and advice, appropriately focusing on the key macroeconomic effects and associated risks of trade policy developments at the national and international levels. IMF advocacy on trade has been underpinned by a major expansion in the attention to trade policy issues in multilateral surveillance—and to some extent in bilateral surveillance—supported by high-quality research and analysis, building on the Fund’s well-established modeling capacity. Looking forward, the Fund will need to sustain its current high level of advocacy and analysis on trade policy issues and consider how to increase the overall impact of this work. Key challenges include: contributing to foster a recommitment to trade policy cooperation; further attention to translating multilateral surveillance into bilateral policy advice; consolidating relations with partner institutions; and increased attention to rapidly developing trade policy issues. Across all these dimensions, care will be needed to ensure appropriate evenhandedness in trade policy surveillance across countries. A holistic review of the IMF’s “trade strategy” would help to guide trade policy work and the allocation of scarce resources among competing priorities.

Surveillance is a core function of the IMF, a critical element of its toolkit for promoting global financial stability. Multilateral surveillance brings into analysis economic linkages and policy spillovers between countries, as well as international economic and market developments. This evaluation report covers the IMF’s multilateral surveillance activities during 2000–05 and addresses a variety of questions: Do the issues analyzed under multilateral surveillance reflect the IMF’s comparative advantage? Are these issues relevant and timely? How well are macroeconomic and capital market surveillance combined in the analysis of relevant issues? How well are the messages of multilateral surveillance presented? And does multilateral surveillance have an impact on country policies? The evaluation concludes with recommendations for the IMF.

This paper analyzes that the IMF has moved beyond its traditional fiscal-centric approach to recognize that social protection can also be macro-critical for broader reasons including social and political stability concerns. Evaluating the IMF’s involvement in social protection is complicated by the fact that there is no standard definition of social protection or of broader/overlapping terms such as social spending and social safeguards in (or outside) the IMF. In this evaluation, social protection is understood to include policies that provide benefits to vulnerable individuals or households. This evaluation found widespread IMF involvement in social protection across countries although the extent of engagement varied. In some cases, engagement was relatively deep, spanning different activities (bilateral surveillance, technical assistance, and/or programs) and involving detailed analysis of distributional impacts, discussion of policy options, active advocacy of social protection, and integration of social protection measures in program design and/or conditionality. This cross-country variation to some degree reflected an appropriate response to country-specific factors, in particular an assessment of whether social protection policy was macrocritical, and the availability of expertise from development partners or in the country itself.

The framework guiding the IMF’s communications—established by the Executive Board in 2007—has enabled the institution to respond flexibly to the changing global context. The framework is based on four guiding principles: (i) deepening understanding and support for the Fund’s role and policies; (ii) better integrating communications into the IMF’s daily operations; (iii) raising the impact of new communications materials and technologies; and (iv) rebalancing outreach efforts to take account of different audiences. In addition, greater emphasis has been placed on strengthening internal communications to help ensure institutional coherence in the Fund’s outreach activities. Continued efforts are needed to strengthen communications going forward. Several issues deserve particular attention. First, taking further steps to ensure clarity and consistency in communication in a world where demand for Fund services continues to rise. Second, doing more to assess the impact of IMF communications and thus better inform efforts going forward. Third, engaging strategically and prudently with new media—including social media.

The Financial Sector Assessment Program (FSAP) is a joint IMF–World Bank initiative to provide countries with comprehensive evaluations of their financial systems.The IEO evaluation assessed the effectiveness of the FSAP from the perspective of the IMF. The main findings address the following areas: the nature of priority setting under the FSAP; the efficiency of FSAP processes and quality of the main diagnostic tools; the overall quality of FSAP content; how well the IMF has used FSAP results in its surveillance, technical assistance, and program activities; and evidence on the overall impact of the FSAP on the domestic policy dialogue, changes in policies and institutions, and market participants.

The IMF’s surveillance framework encompasses a new focus on multilateral issues, and especially the spillovers from one economy onto others. This third Annual Report of the Independent Evaluation Office describes ongoing and recently completed evaluations and discusses additions to IEO’s work plan. General lessons pertaining to IMF surveillance emerging from recent evaluations are highlighted and discussed, namely the need for better integration of financial and macroeconomic factors as well as bilateral and multilateral policy analysis and policy prescriptions. The findings of an External Evaluation Panel charged with assessing the work of the IEO are also covered.

This paper discusses that the Independent Evaluation Office (IEO) has also launched three new evaluations—which will analyze the IMF’s role on fragile states, its financial surveillance activities, and its advice on unconventional monetary policies—and two evaluation updates—which will look into the IMF’s exchange rate policy advice and structural conditionality. The evaluation found that, for the most part, the IMF’s euro area surveillance identified the right issues during the pre-crisis period but did not foresee the magnitude of the risks that would later become paramount. The IMF’s surveillance of the financial regulatory architecture was generally of high quality, but staff, along with most other experts, missed the buildup of banking system risks in some countries. The report found several issues with the way decision making was managed by the IMF. In May 2010, the IMF Executive Board approved a decision to provide exceptional access financing to Greece without seeking preemptive debt restructuring, even though its sovereign debt was not deemed sustainable with a high probability.

This volume examines how independent evaluation contributes to the legitimacy and effectiveness of the IMF. It describes the evolution and impact of the Independent Evaluation Office ten years after its creation as well as the challenges it has faced. It also incorporates feedback from a wide range of internal and external actors and offers useful insights for international organizations, academics, and other global stakeholders.

"The Ninth Periodic Monitoring Report (PMR) on the Status of Management Implementation Plans (MIPs) in Response to Board-Endorsed Independent Evaluation Office (IEO) Recommendations assesses the progress made over the last year on actions contained in two “new” MIPs arising from recent IEO evaluations, and another seven for which individual management actions were classified as “open” in the Eighth PMR. Overall, 42 of the 96 actions included in the Ninth PMR remain open, representing roughly the same proportion as the previous PMR. A 25 percent net increase in open management actions over the past year is accounted for by 24 new actions from two MIPs, and 16 actions that have been implemented over the period. There is positive traction on the last four MIPs, but older actions appear challenging to implement. Better progress has been made with the implementation of the actions contained in recent MIPs. Fourteen of the actions implemented since the Eighth PMR relate to MIPs approved after October 2015, while only two actions (out of 24) from earlier MIPs were implemented. Improvements in the follow-up process approved by the Board in October 2015 have contributed to speedier implementation of recent actions, but some challenges remain. There are lingering challenges with defining measures of success for numerous actions, but accountabilities are now clearer and many actions are at advanced stages at the time of the Board’s discussion of the MIPs. This PMR introduces indicators to support the process for resolving challenges with long-standing actions. Despite the slower progress with the older actions, significant advances have been made over the past year in several key areas. These include: protocols for engaging the IEO; risk management and analysis; the mainstreaming of macrofinancial surveillance; an overarching strategy on data and statistics; guidance on cooperation with other organizations, including Regional Financing Arrangements (RFAs); improvements in External Stability Assessments; and ongoing analytical work on surveillance and program, including macrostructural issues, emerging topics, and debt sustainability analysis. On the other hand, progress has been slower on macro forecasting, outward spillovers, and cross-country knowledge sharing."