The International Monetary Fund’s (IMF) Executive Board approved $21.5 billion in financing for member countries, in addition to $220 million in concessional financing for low-income countries, the Managing Director, Christine Lagarde, has said.
She said the Board also reviewed facilities such as the Flexible Credit Line, the Precautionary and Liquidity Line, and the Rapid Financing instrument—to make sure that they continue to help countries as effectively as possible. The membership also agreed to transfer gold profits to help meet the financing needs of low-income members in the years ahead.
Her comments are contained in the IMF foreword to the institution’s Annual Report, 2014 titled, ‘From Stabilisation to Sustainable Growth, published over the weekend.
She said.since the crisis broke, the institution has provided training to all of its members and technical assistance to 90 percent of them, helping countries design, build, and strengthen the institutions that make up the building blocks of economic success. For the fourth straight year, the Fund increased its delivery of technical assistance, especially in low-income countries, and increased spending on training. Demand for technical assistance continues to be strongest in the fiscal area, but it has been growing across all regions. Over the past year, the IMF launched new tools and courses, opened a new regional technical assistance center in Ghana, and received $181 million in new donor funds.
Seven years after the onset of the global financial crisis, the world still has a way to go to secure a sustainable recovery marked by strong growth that supports rapid job creation and benefits all, International Monetary Fund (IMF) Managing Director, Christine Lagarde, has said.
“The recovery is ongoing, but it is still too slow and fragile, subject to the vagaries of financial sentiment. Millions of people are still looking for work. The level of uncertainty might be diminishing, but it is certainly not disappearing.” Ms. Lagarde said that “throughout the crisis and in the recovery period, the IMF has been, and continues to be, an indispensible agent of economic cooperation” for its membership.
The IMF has made it a priority to better integrate bilateral and multilateral monitoring and advice. The Managing Director’s Global Policy Agenda, laid out at both the Annual Meetings in 2013 and the Spring Meetings in 2014, emphasized the need to strengthen the coherence of policies and cooperation among policymakers. The priorities are clear: advanced economies need to focus on measured and well-communicated policy choices to secure the recovery; emerging markets need to strengthen their fundamentals, reduce their vulnerabilities, and step up structural reforms; and everyone needs to embrace cooperation and engage in dialogue.
In the Annual Report, Ms. Lagarde reflects on the 70th anniversary of the founding of the IMF.
“Back in 1944, global leaders were determined to put the chaos and carnage of war behind them, and build a world based on collaboration instead of conflict, integration instead of insularity. The IMF was founded on the core principle that the route to national prosperity runs through global prosperity.”
Background:
The IMF’s Annual Report 2014 is available in print in eight languages (Arabic, Chinese, English, French, German, Japanese, Russian, and Spanish), on CD-ROM (in English only), and on the Internet at www.imf.org/external/pubs/ft/ar/2014/eng
. The Annual Report web page includes the IMF’s financial statements for FY2014 and other background documentation. Copies of the Annual Report, the financial statements, and the CD-ROM are available free of charge from IMF Publication Services, P.O. Box 92780, Washington, DC 20090, online at www.imfbookstore.org or www.elibrary.imf.org, or by e-mail at publications@imf.org.
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