Washington, DC — The International Monetary Fund (IMF) Executive Board has concluded its 2026 Comprehensive Surveillance Review (CSR), setting strategic and operational priorities to strengthen the Fund’s surveillance and better support member countries amid a rapidly changing global economic landscape.
The review, concluded on Sept 17, identifies strengthening members’ resilience as its overarching goal, particularly as countries face more frequent shocks, heightened uncertainty and elevated debt levels.
The IMF said the review found that surveillance continues to add value by helping members address complex policy challenges and manage risks arising from major global shifts, including digitalisation and artificial intelligence (AI), geoeconomic fragmentation, climate change and demographic changes.
The CSR sets out three strategic priorities for Fund surveillance: supporting resilience and growth through more granular, tailored and integrated policy advice; strengthening external stability through more comprehensive external sector and spillover analysis; and enhancing countries’ risk management capacity through robust risk assessments and contingent policy advice.
It also calls for more flexible and risk-based surveillance, supported by the strategic deployment of staff expertise where it is most relevant to member countries.
Among the proposed measures are more agile and continuous surveillance, enhanced regional and plurilateral engagement, better integration of bilateral and multilateral surveillance with capacity development, the use of AI tools with appropriate safeguards, streamlined surveillance requirements and a longer Article IV consultation cycle for countries with Fund-supported programmes.
The IMF said the CSR forms part of a broader update of its toolkit aimed at helping members navigate a shock-prone and transforming global economy. It is aligned with other ongoing reviews of IMF policy frameworks and institutional workstreams, including the 2026 Review of Program Design and Conditionality, the 2026 Financial Sector Assessment Program Review and the 2026 Review of the Debt Sustainability Framework for Low-Income Countries.
In their assessment, Executive Directors welcomed the CSR and broadly supported its strategic and operational priorities, noting that frequent and overlapping shocks, elevated uncertainty, constrained policy space and structural transformations have made policy challenges increasingly complex.
They supported efforts to provide more granular and integrated policy advice, including through stronger macroeconomic frameworks, realistic debt and financing projections, more specific monetary policy advice, enhanced macro-financial integration and better-prioritised structural policy recommendations.
On external stability, the Directors backed more comprehensive and forward-looking analysis of imbalances, vulnerabilities, capital flows, trade and industrial policies and relevant spillovers. They stressed that such assessments should be timely, consistent and even-handed, particularly for systemically important economies whose policies may affect the international monetary system.
The Directors also welcomed a stronger focus on risk management, supporting assessments and actionable contingent policy advice focused on critical risks that could materially alter baseline recommendations.
They agreed that stronger prioritisation and more selective, risk-based coverage would sharpen the focus of Article IV consultations and create room for deeper analysis of issues critical to members’ domestic and balance-of-payments stability.
The Directors also broadly supported modernising surveillance to make the Fund’s engagement more agile, continuous and responsive, including through stronger links between bilateral and multilateral surveillance and capacity development, enhanced regional and plurilateral engagement, and greater use of high-quality data and analytical tools.
They supported the gradual deployment of AI tools with clear guardrails, governance and oversight, while preserving staff judgement.
The IMF said effective implementation would be critical to the success of the CSR. The Directors stressed the need for clear prioritisation, strong review and accountability processes, and close coordination across related workstreams.
They also called for further engagement with Executive Directors as the revised Surveillance Guidance Note is developed.
The next Comprehensive Surveillance Review is scheduled to take place in five years. —IMF
