Washington, DC: On September 17, 2026, the Executive Board of the International Monetary Fund (IMF) concluded the 2026 Comprehensive Surveillance Review (CSR), which sets strategic and operational priorities for strengthening IMF surveillance to better support members in the years ahead.
The 2026 CSR examines progress since the last comprehensive review concluded in May 2021. It finds that surveillance continues to add value, helping members navigate complex policy challenges and manage risks amid profound shifts in the global landscape driven by digitalization and AI, geoeconomic fragmentation, climate change, and demographic shifts.
The confluence of these forces in a world of more frequent shocks and high uncertainty, together with the already elevated debt levels, is making it more difficult for countries to safeguard stability and sustain growth. The 2026 CSR’s overarching goal is to strengthen members’ resilience—the capacity to withstand, adapt to, and recover from shocks—which is critical for economic stability and sustainability.
To advance this objective, the CSR sets 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.
The 2026 CSR also underscores the importance of flexible and risk-based surveillance supported by strategic development and deployment of staff’s expertise, where it is most relevant for member countries. The CSR seeks to strengthen prioritization by clarifying the application of the macrocriticality criterion in bilateral surveillance and providing principles for assessing the need for and modalities of institutional engagement in new, non-traditional policy areas. The CSR also proposes modernizing surveillance modalities, including through more agile and continuous surveillance, enhanced regional and plurilateral engagement, better integration of bilateral, multilateral surveillance and capacity development, use of AI tools with guardrails, streamlining of surveillance requirements, and lengthening the A-IV cycle in countries with Fund-supported programs.
The CSR’s main findings and recommendations are discussed in the Overview Paper, which builds on extensive and novel background work, including Traction of Article IV Policy Advice, Financial Sector Coverage and Macrofinancial Integration in Article IV Consultations, Selected Operational Issues, and Stakeholder Surveys.
The 2026 CSR is part of a comprehensive update and upgrade of the IMF’s toolkit to better help members navigate a shock-prone and transforming global economy. The CSR is closely aligned with other ongoing reviews of IMF policy frameworks and institutional workstreams—including the 2026 Review of Program Design and Conditionally, the 2026 FSAP Review, and the 2026 Review of the Debt Sustainability Framework for Low-Income Countries — to help ensure coherence across efforts to strengthen the Fund’s support to members. This includes work on capacity development, fragile and conflict-affected states, and external sector assessment.
Executive Board Assessment[1]
Executive Directors welcomed the 2026 Comprehensive Surveillance Review (CSR). They reaffirmed the 2012 Integrated Surveillance Decision (ISD) as an appropriate overarching framework for Fund surveillance, while noting that the CSR provides an opportunity to adapt surveillance practices to evolving policy challenges, risks, and members’ needs. Directors noted that frequent and overlapping shocks, elevated uncertainty, constrained policy space, and structural transformations are making members’ policy challenges increasingly complex. Against this backdrop, they broadly supported the CSR’s proposed strategic and operational priorities, which aim to strengthen surveillance and bolster members’ resilience, thereby supporting the stability and sustainability of member countries and the effective functioning of the international monetary system (IMS).
Strategic Priorities for Surveillance
Directors supported the proposals to bolster countries’ resilience and growth. They welcomed efforts to provide more granular and integrated policy advice, including through more coherent macroeconomic frameworks, realistic debt and financing projections, more specific monetary policy advice, stronger macro-financial integration, and better prioritized structural policy recommendations. Directors emphasized that advice should be better tailored, reflecting institutional capacity, political economy considerations, and distributional impacts. On monetary policy, they welcomed that staff’s analyses would not include mechanical or normative benchmarks for the policy path, and many Directors cautioned against overly prescriptive guidance from staff on the future path of monetary policy, emphasizing the importance of safeguards for the publication and communication of such guidance.
Directors supported strengthening external sector surveillance through more comprehensive and forward-looking analysis of imbalances, vulnerabilities, domestic-external linkages, capital flows, trade and industrial policies, and relevant outward spillovers. They emphasized that such assessments should be timely, consistent, evenhanded, and closely linked to the overall policy mix, particularly for systemically important economies whose policies may affect the effective operation of the IMS. Directors noted the importance of maintaining attention to inward spillovers alongside strengthened analysis of outward spillovers. Directors endorsed maintaining the Fund’s current approach to the coverage of security-motivated policies, which includes assessing their economic implications where macrocritical. A few Directors called for a more systematic assessment of spillovers from trade-distorting measures, including primary and secondary sanctions.
Directors welcomed a stronger focus on risk management. They supported concentrating assessments and actionable contingent policy advice on critical risks that could materially alter baseline recommendations, while preserving the baseline as the anchor of surveillance. They encouraged more rigorous analysis of transmission channels and greater use of quantitative scenario analysis where feasible, while recognizing the continued importance of staff judgment and of clear public communication mindful of market sensitivities, institutional frameworks, and country circumstances.
Prioritization, Coverage, and Modalities
Directors agreed that stronger prioritization as well as more selective and risk-based coverage would help sharpen the focus of Article IV consultations and create space for deeper analysis of the issues most critical to members’ domestic and balance-of-payments stability. In this context, they supported the proposals described in paragraph 70 of the CSR Overview Paper on streamlining requirements for Article IV staff reports.
Directors welcomed the clarification of the operational application of the macrocriticality criterion. They broadly agreed with the principles-based approach aimed at supporting a more rigorous and consistent application of this criterion as the basis for coverage of policy areas in bilateral surveillance, consistent with the 2012 ISD. Directors concurred that strong safeguards are needed to ensure transparency, consistency, and evenhandedness in its application. They also broadly endorsed the proposed Surveillance Prioritization Guidelines (SPG) to support strategic institutional decision-making on engagement in non-traditional policy areas, including through reassessment of ongoing institutional engagement over time. They broadly agreed that the principles-based approach and SPG would help tailor surveillance to the evolving needs of all members. A number of Directors cautioned against reducing engagement on issues that affect fewer countries but have severe consequences for fragile and conflict-affected states, small developing states, and highly vulnerable countries.
Directors generally supported the proposed directions of future work on governance, gender, digital money, and artificial intelligence (AI). On climate, most Directors expect the objectives of the Climate Strategy and targets for the coverage of adaptation, transition, and mitigation policies in bilateral surveillance to be reached given the macrocriticality of climate issues. A view was also expressed that climate policies are not macrocritical in a bilateral surveillance context. Many Directors stressed that climate ambition and domestic policy spillovers need to remain part of multilateral surveillance in line with the Fund’s mandate. Many Directors also emphasized maintaining climate expertise and analytical capacity. A few Directors stressed that work in non-traditional areas should not come at the expense of work in traditional policy areas. More generally, Directors stressed the importance of tracking coverage and expertise in non-traditional areas over time and keeping the Board informed. They also emphasized the importance of close collaboration with other international institutions to leverage complementary expertise and avoid duplication.
Directors broadly supported the proposals to modernize surveillance modalities to make Fund engagement more agile, continuous, and responsive. They welcomed stronger synergies between bilateral surveillance, multilateral surveillance, and capacity development; enhanced regional and plurilateral engagement; and better use of high-quality data, analytical tools, and staff expertise. In this context, Directors stressed the need to address persistent data gaps, strengthen statistical capacity, and transparently acknowledge data limitations where they constrain surveillance, thereby supporting effective, evenhanded, and evidence-based engagement. They also supported the gradual deployment of AI tools with clear guardrails, governance, and oversight, while preserving staff judgment.
Implementation and Follow-Up
Directors welcomed further efforts to strengthen the traction of Fund surveillance by making policy advice more specific, actionable, and tailored to countries’ implementation capacity. They emphasized the importance of better integration of capacity development with surveillance, including earlier identification of capacity constraints, and better alignment with macrocritical policy priorities. Directors welcomed the development of the Policy Recommendation Assessment System and encouraged its use to track implementation, identify bottlenecks, strengthen continuity of advice, and support evenhandedness.
Directors underscored that the success of the CSR will depend critically on effective implementation and noted that weak or uneven implementation could undermine the quality, traction, and evenhandedness of surveillance. They stressed the importance of clear prioritization, strong review and accountability processes, and close coordination across related workstreams. They called for further engagement with Executive Directors during the development of the revised Surveillance Guidance Note.
