In recent months the Fund has been reassessing its lending practices during sovereign debt restructuring, including the IMF’s Exceptional Access Lending Framework. Reforms strive to achieve an appropriate balance between protecting the Fund from mission creep and a potentially more tenuous financial position, and protecting the highly integrated international financial system. Under consideration are ideas to utilize debt reprofilings more frequently in exceptional access cases where there is uncertainty over a member’s debt sustainability, and to eliminate the systemic risk exemption adopted during the Eurozone crisis.
During this event, Bretton Woods Committee members will have a closed-door dialogue with IMF General Counsel Sean Hagan, Economic Counsellor, Olivier Blanchard, as well as other Fund representatives, to provide input as the Fund considers proposals for policy reform in this area.
Due to limited capacity, this event is by invitation only.
On Friday February 6th, 2015 a group of approximately 25 Bretton Woods Committee members held a private roundtable discussion with senior International Monetary Fund (IMF) officials to reassess the IMF’s role in sovereign debt crises. The dialogue – moderated by William R. Rhodes – afforded the Fund an opportunity to gather timely input from a cross-section of the Committee’s private sector leaders, policy experts and academics as it rethinks its approach to sovereign debt restructuring with the objective of reducing the costs and risks for all stakeholders: sovereign debtors, creditors, and the overall system.
The closed-door dialogue took place at the Fund’s headquarters in Washington, DC and focused specifically on the proposals floated by IMF staff in its June 2014 report to reform the Fund’s exceptional access framework and eliminate the systemic exemption established in 2010. Leading representatives from the U.S. Department of Treasury and the Federal Reserve Bank of New York were also involved.
This was the first of what will likely be a series of consultative discussions with the Bretton Woods Committee as IMF officials deliberate proposals in the months ahead to reform their sovereign debt lending practices and framework.
Click here for a copy of the IMF staff paper under discussion.