Energy subsidies have wide-ranging economic consequences. While aimed at protecting consumers, subsidies aggravate fiscal imbalances, crowd-out priority public spending, and depress private investment, including in the energy sector. Subsidies also distort resource allocation by encouraging...

This supplement presents country case studies reviewing energy subsidy reform experiences, which are the basis for the reform lessons identified in the main paper. The selection of countries for the case studies reflects the availability of data and of previously documented evidence on...

Russia's war in Ukraine and the related fallout have created a challenging external environment for the post-pandemic recovery of low-income countries (LICs). Food and commodity prices linger at elevated level with worsening food security. Global financial conditions tighten as major economies...

This Handbook provides guidance to staff on the IMF's concessional 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...

The G20 had made enhancing cross-border payments a priority. Faster, cheaper, more transparent and more inclusive cross-border payment services have the potential to be transformative for citizens and economies across the world. The Roadmap for Enhancing Cross-Border Payments, launched in 2020,...

On July 22, 2022, the Executive Board of the International Monetary Fund (IMF) approved the IMF's first Strategy toward Mainstreaming Gender into the IMF's core activities. Mainstreaming gender at the IMF starts with the recognition that reducing gender disparities goes hand-in-hand with higher...

The coronavirus crisis has stiffened debt and development-related headwinds that had become strong even before 2020. Sustaining development while maintaining debt sustainability has been made harder by the protracted effects of the pandemic on public finances, earnings and employment, and human...

This paper provides an update of the adequacy of the resources of the Fund's Poverty Reduction and Growth Trust (PRGT) and the debt relief trusts. Demand for PRGT loans continued to exceed earlier projections. Total PRGT credit outstanding reached SDR 18.3 billion at end-2023, or three times the...

The outlook for Low-Income Countries (LICs) is gradually improving, but they face persistent macroeconomic vulnerabilities, including liquidity challenges due to high debt service. There is significant heterogeneity among LICs: the poorest and most fragile countries have faced deep scarring from...