By Arun Kumar, IANS,
Washington: International Monetary Fund’s (IMF) interactions are least effective with advanced and large emerging economies, which together account for about 90 percent of global GDP, according to an evaluation of interactions with member-countries.
Interactions were most effective with low-income countries — those eligible for the Fund’s Poverty Reduction and Growth Facility — and to a lesser extent with emerging economies, reflecting the broad effectiveness of interactions in a programme and technical assistance context.
The report of IMF’s Independent Evaluation Office (IEO) released Wednesday also found that interactions were under-managed, although some individuals managed particular interactions very well.
The evaluation examined the IMF’s country-level interactions on surveillance, programmes and technical assistance over 2001-08, with special attention to 2007-08.
The report’s recommendations aim at improving the effectiveness of core IMF activities, which will become more important as the global financial crisis subsides.
The evaluation evidence on the effectiveness of interactions with the advanced economies was mixed.
The large advanced economies rated the overall effectiveness relatively highly, while IMF staff working on those economies rated it the lowest of all groups, the report said.
The large emerging economies rated the overall effectiveness of interactions lower than any other country group.
Many interviewed authorities saw the surveillance process as lacking value in its content and/or evenhandedness in execution, which some saw as biased towards the advanced economies and tending to value technical interactions more highly.
For other emerging economies, the evaluation found a wide variety of experience.
On the whole, it had a more positive view of the substantive quality of interactions, especially on programmes and technical assistance, and a somewhat negative view of the management of interactions, reflecting greater concerns about excessive turnover of mission chiefs and related matters affecting the continuity of dialogue.
For the low-income countries, the evaluation found evidence of improvement in the effectiveness of interactions in the second half of the evaluation period. Most authorities gave high marks to IMF technical assistance.
The report recommended upgrading the content and substantive quality of Fund surveillance, and developing knowledge-based products to enhance the its traction with authorities in surveillance-only relationships where the effectiveness deficit is most pronounced.