After narrowing modestly in 2013, the global scale of current account imbalances, and of excess imbalances, held steady in 2014. Over the last several years, while the country composition of imbalances has rotated somewhat, overall there has been little progress on reducing excess imbalances....

After narrowing in the aftermath of the global financial crisis and remaining broadly unchanged in recent years, global imbalances increased moderately in 2015, amid a reconfiguration of current accounts and exchange rates. Shifts in 2015 were driven primarily by the uneven strength of the...

Global current account imbalances were broadly unchanged in 2016, with minor shifts adding to the reconfiguration under way since 2013. The fall in commodity prices, uneven cyclical recoveries in systemic economies, and differences in policy responses contributed to the rotation of imbalances....

The G-8 debt relief proposal, if adopted, should have little impact on the rational and operational aspects of the shocks window, but it may affect some of the financing consideratins, which are taken up in the page on "The G-8 Debt Cancellation Proposal and its Implications for the Fund

This note discusses the implications of the price shocks for the balance of payments of low-income countries in sub-Saharan Africa. The response by bilateral donors and multilateral institutions will, in practice, need to be country-specific. To this end, the note identifies a list of 18...

At the Executive Board discussion on the role of the Fund in low-income countries, Directors requested proposals to address the absence of concessional instruments other than the PRGF in the Fund's financial assistance to low-income members facing exogenous shocks. Against this background, this...