2024-05-09-IMF-FY2025–FY2027_Medium-Term_Budget_63页_1mb

IMF FY2025-FY2027 Medium-Term Budget Summary

Core Content

The IMF has approved the FY2025–FY2027 Medium-Term Budget (MTB), which reflects the organization's ongoing efforts to align its resources with evolving member needs and global challenges. The budget is in a transition phase, moving from a growth-oriented approach to a stabilization phase, with a focus on agility, discipline, and strategic reprioritization.

Main Views

• The global economic environment remains complex and challenging, marked by slow and uneven growth, increased fragmentation, deepening divergence, and persistently high interest rates.
• The IMF continues to play a critical role in supporting macroeconomic stability, promoting growth-oriented and green reforms, and strengthening international cooperation.
• The budget framework is guided by the Global Policy Agenda (GPA) and emphasizes capacity development (CD), digitalization, climate action, and debt management as key areas for focus.
• Budget constraints and limited buffers necessitate careful prioritization and trade-offs to ensure effective use of resources.

Key Information

Budget Overview

• Net Administrative Budget (NAB) for FY25 is $1,501 million (nominal), with a real budget of $1,441 million.
• The budget includes the final tranche of the FY23–FY25 structural augmentation of $29 million (2.1% of NAB), supporting work in priority areas.
• A one-off increase to the Executive Board (OED) budget of $9 million (0.6% of NAB) is allocated to support the creation of a 25th Chair and restore staffing levels to pre-2008 levels.
• The maximum carryforward of unused budget resources will be reduced from 6% to 5% of the underlying budget to gradually unwind pandemic-related temporary resourcing.

Capital Budget

• The FY25 capital budget is $122 million, supporting:
  • Facilities lifecycle replacements and upgrades to field offices.
  • IT-intensive investments, including cloud license costs, informed by the upcoming Business Technology Strategy.
• The capital budget is part of a three-year funding availability plan, with indicated increases in subsequent years (FY26: $124 million; FY27: $127 million).

External Funding

• The externally funded budget for FY25 is $276 million (nominal), reflecting a 6% real increase from FY22.
• This increase supports the structural transformation agenda, particularly in capacity development and global cooperation.
• The external funding limit will remain flat in FY26, with a real flat trajectory starting from that year.

Work Pressures and Staffing

• Work pressures remain elevated, with average overtime in FY24 at 11.1%, still above pre-pandemic levels.
• Staffing levels have increased by 304 positions (10%) from FY20 to FY24, including a 20% rise in externally funded positions for CD work.
• Fund-financed staff are expected to increase by 58 positions in FY25, before stabilizing in FY26–FY27.
• Non-staff personnel have also increased by about 50%, with long-term contractuals seeing the largest rise (60%).

Budget Reprioritization

• The IMF continues its reprioritization efforts, focusing on aligning resources with member needs and institutional priorities.
• These efforts include centralized streamlining measures, crisis-driven reprioritization, and ongoing modernization of operations.
• A structured demand and savings exercise is at the core of budget formulation, with strategic outputs such as surveillance, lending, and CD being prioritized.

Risks and Mitigation

• Risks to the budget remain elevated due to:
  • Uncertainty in demand for Fund lending.
  • High work pressures affecting staff well-being and productivity.
  • Pricing uncertainty, particularly for non-personnel inputs such as airfares, medical benefits, and data subscriptions.
• The budget includes active risk management and enterprise risk self-assessment, with measures to absorb rising costs and ensure budget discipline.

Strategic Priorities

The budget supports the following strategic priorities:

• Safeguarding macroeconomic stability and rebuilding buffers.
• Enhancing multilateral, regional, and bilateral surveillance, lending, and capacity development.
• Supporting growth-enhancing reforms and ongoing structural transitions.
• Addressing climate change, digitalization, inequality, and debt architecture.
• Reinforcing collective resilience through analytical work and policy reviews.
• Enhancing effectiveness via modernization, institutional readiness, and enterprise risk management.

Conclusion

The FY25–FY27 budget is designed to ensure the IMF remains responsive, agile, and effective in the face of global economic challenges. It reflects a transition from pandemic-driven temporary support to a more sustainable and structured approach, with a flat real budget trajectory starting in FY26. The budget emphasizes strategic alignment, capacity development, and international cooperation, while addressing staff well-being and operational risks through reprioritization and resource discipline.