International Monetary Fund

In this note, David Andrews looks at one mechanism that could work for using excess SDRs to the benefit of low- and middle-income countries: donating them. It is a simple idea but hardly straightforward, as he demonstrates with a “case study” of how the United Kingdom might do this. The UK’s rules g...

The IMF’s concessional support for low-income countries (LICs) is provided primarily through the Poverty Reduction and Growth Trust (PRGT). Since the start of the pandemic, lending from the PRGT has risen very sharply in response to the unprecedented and urgent needs of LICs; total PRGT credit outst...

Since Covid-19 emerged there have been numerous calls for an allocation of Special Drawing Rights (SDRs) as part of a broader effort to assist low-income countries (LICs) in dealing with the fallout from the pandemic. So far, these calls have been thwarted by political opposition from some of the IM...