Ieo Report On Multilateral Surveillance

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.

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.

In response to the Global Financial Crisis, the IMF launched many initiatives to strengthen financial surveillance and better advise member countries of vulnerabilities and risks. While these initiatives have not yet been tested by a major crisis, the efforts have delivered a substantial upgrade of the Fund’s financial surveillance, including giving the IMF clearer responsibilities over financial sector stability and cross-country spillovers; making periodic financial stability assessments mandatory for jurisdictions with systemically important financial sectors; invigorating efforts to integrate financial and macroeconomic analysis in bilateral and multilateral surveillance; enhancing cooperation with the Financial Stability Board and standard setting bodies to promote reforms and monitor agreed standards; and taking steps to recruit and train greater financial expertise. While recognizing these achievements, this evaluation finds that the quality and impact of the IMF’s financial surveillance has been uneven. The expansion of products and activities has presented the Fund with difficult trade-offs between bilateral and multilateral surveillance; between countries with systemically important financial sectors and other member countries; and between financial surveillance and other activities. Moreover, resource constraints have slowed the needed build-up of financial and macrofinancial expertise. These are critical issues, given the IMF’s position as the only international financial institution with the mandate and ability to conduct financial and macrofinancial surveillance over the full range of countries as well as the global economy, and given that these issues are at the core of the IMF’s responsibilities. Thus, to further strengthen financial surveillance, the evaluation recommends devoting greater resources to financial surveillance overall; further strengthening financial and macrofinancial analysis in Article IV surveillance; refining resource allocation for FSAPs; enhancing rigor and transparency in multilateral surveillance; intensifying efforts to be a global center of excellence on financial and macrofinancial research; and extending efforts to develop financial expertise among IMF staff.

The IEO report provides a welcome opportunity to reflect on the IMF’s initiatives to expand and deepen its financial surveillance work in response to the Global Financial Crisis. In order to improve the relevance and traction of bilateral financial surveillance, the IMF needs to deepen financial and macrofinancial analysis, particularly in Article IV consultations, including by taking practical steps to better integrate Financial Sector Assessment Program analysis in Article IV consultations and by increasing financial skills and expertise among staff. The IMF should continue to work to enhance the impact of IMF multilateral surveillance by increasing rigor and transparency, and by deepening collaboration with international partners. On scaling-up the IMF’s work with the international regulatory agencies to assess the impact of reforms, the IMF has undertaken several assessments of different aspects of the reforms following the 2012 Financial Surveillance Strategy. Some of these have been conducted jointly with the Standard Setting Bodies.

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 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.

This report describes recent follow-up on past Independent Evaluation Office (IEO) evaluations, summarizes the update of the 2006 evaluation of multilateral surveillance, and outlines the ongoing evaluations. It raises the concern that progress in implementing Board-endorsed IEO recommendations has been quite mixed, suggesting the need for further consideration to reinforcing the follow-up process.

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.

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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.