Full text also available in: Arabic, Chinese, French, Japanese, Russian, and Spanish. The global economy is expanding moderately but the outlook has weakened further since October, and risks have increased. The global economy has been impaired from growth that has been too slow for too long, and...

Access to Fund financial resources provides a financial safety net to help countries manage adverse shocks, acting as a potential supplement to foreign reserves when there is a balance of payments need. Such support is especially important to developing countries with limited capacity to borrow...

PRGT-eligible members make considerable use of Fund concessional financing. Since 2010, 56 percent of Fund arrangements have involved a PRGT-facility. This paper examines a number of issues raised by Executive Directors and the International Monetary and Financial Committee (IMFC) since the...

Small developing states are disproportionately vulnerable to natural disasters. On average, the annual cost of disasters for small states is nearly 2 percent of GDP-more than four times that for larger countries. This reflects a higher frequency of disasters, adjusted for land area, as well as...

This Handbook provides guidance to staff on the financial facilities and non-financial instruments for low-income countries (LICs), defined here as all countries eligible to obtain concessional financing from the Fund. It updates the previous version of the Handbook that was published in...

This Handbook provides guidance to staff on the financial and non-financial facilities for low-income countries (LICs), defined here as all countries eligible to obtain concessional financing from the Fund. It updates the previous version of the Handbook that was published in February 2015 (IMF,...

The Rapid Credit Facility (RCF) and Rapid Financing Instrument (RFI) are valuable components of the disaster risk financing tool kit for Fund members, especially developing countries. They help to meet urgent balance of payments needs, and are designed to play a catalytic role in mobilizing...

This note provides the IMF staff assessment of recent macroeconomic developments in Togo and progress under the Fund-supported three-year Poverty Reduction and Growth Facility program (PRGF) starting from January 2008 based on preliminary information through end-December 2008