IMFC chair’s statement analysis Annual Meetings 2025
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Article summary
The IMFC are a group of finance ministers who set the direction of the IMF. For the eighth occasion running they have not been able to issue a joint communique. Their individual country statements demonstrated increasing geopolitical fragmentation and divisions over impact of US tariffs on the global economy, while the chair’s statement tows US line on efficiencies and calls for greater austerity measures.
As in the previous seven meetings, the International Monetary and Financial Committee (IMFC) – a group of finance ministers which is responsible for setting the direction of the Fund – were unable to issue a joint communique at the 2025 Annual Meetings. The Chair, Mohammed Al Jadaan, Minister of Finance of Saudi Arabia, issued a joint statement and member states of the IMFC issued individual statements, the content of which underlined the level of geopolitical division at the Fund (see Dispatch Springs 2025).
Most notable was the statement issued by US Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent, who congratulated the Fund and Bank for taking steps to deprioritise their climate and gender related activities, but made further demands that both institutions take a position against China, overtly support US interests, and further re-orient themselves towards the interests of private capital.
In contrast, the statement by UN Secretary-General António Guterres highlighted the risks being posed by tariffs and protectionism to the world economy and called for reforms of the international financial architecture (IFA) to address the multiple intersecting crises enveloping the globe, including implementation of the Seville Platform for Action, COP30 and the Pact for the Future. Significantly, the statement also referred to increasing South-South cooperation, stating “developing economies are responding to this retrenchment, by reducing their exposure to global uncertainty,” but highlighted “this is not a retreat from multilateralism.”
The IMF’s statements throughout the week of the Annual Meetings that US economic policy and tariffs had not disrupted the global economy was also contradicted in the statement by Brazil, which reiterated that “emerging markets and developing economies remain the main engine of global growth” and further called for the building of a “new globalization”. China’s statement focused once again on the need for IMF quota reform (see Observer Autumn 2023), and also highlighted the risks posed by tariffs calling for strengthened country level surveillance to deal with the “spillover effects” of domestic economic policy. This clear reference to the US underlines the importance of the IMF’s comprehensive review of surveillance (CSR) to both countries and the potential for its further politicization – a factor which has stymied efforts at genuine quota reform – as it becomes a test of whether the Fund is able to formulate an outcome that is independent of US interests (see Observer Summer 2025).
Chair’s statement attempts unity but stops short of defending multilateralism
The jointly agreed text released by the chair attempts to walk a line between this apparent stark division, by referring to “major policy shifts in trade,” “heightening” global uncertainty and a “challenging context of low growth, high debt, more frequent extreme weather events and natural disasters.” Having reflected some of the concerns of leading developing countries without mentioning climate change, it then re-states the IMF position, that growth is nonetheless “resilient” and that even more stringent fiscal adjustment is needed to address public debt. In a repeat of the Fiscal Monitor position, it calls for a strategy based on “mobilising domestic resources, improving spending efficiency, supporting growth-enhancing public and private investments” and then adds a somewhat half-hearted reference to countries “preserving social cohesion”.
Significantly, the statement does not seek to defend multilateralism and makes no reference to the agreements made at the recent Fouth UN Financing for Development conference (FfD4) – for example, on debt it only mentions the G20 Common Framework, the IMF and World Bank’s three-pillar approach and Global Sovereign Debt Roundtable and makes no reference to the Borrowers Forum agreed at FfD4. Civil society has demonstrated the extent to which debt servicing is crowding out development and climate spending needs in many developing countries, and criticised the three-pillar approach for its heavy reliance on private finance – which will increase given the weak possibility for increasing domestic resource mobilisation in many countries and declining official development assistance flows – to fill this gap (see Observer Summer 2025). On multilateralism it mentions only “multilateral coordination, supporting a fair and open global economy”, and on IMF quota reform it makes no reference to the outcomes of FFD4 on reforming the IFA. The statement instead acknowledges that the 16th General Review of Quotas (GRQ) has not been ratified by a sufficient number of countries (including the US), and states that future quota reform should “recognize that realignment in quota shares should aim at better reflecting members’ relative positions in the world economy, while protecting the quota shares of the poorest members.” More practically it once again refers to “advancing the work on developing principles to guide future discussions on IMF quota and governance by the 2026 Spring Meetings.”
In terms of the IMF’s internal review processes, the statement refers only very generally to the outcomes of the Low-Income Countries Debt Sustainability Framework Review, and the ongoing conditionality review while on surveillance, once again it walks a line of acknowledging that the Fund will “promote sustainable growth, and achieve an orderly rebalancing of the global economy.” The 2021 CSR mandated that economic sustainability consists of all of the areas that the Fund has deemed ‘macrocritical’ – including highlighting gender, climate and social inequality issues and calling for more work on the distributional impacts of IMF policy (see Observer Summer 2025), yet the statement only makes reference to this obliquely, instead keeping a focus on “excessive global imbalances.”
Finally, the statement responds positively to US demands for a restructure and ‘belt-tightening’ within the Fund itself, promising internal “streamlining efforts at the IMF to deliver efficiency gains and best value to the membership.” Although the previous seven meetings have not led to a joint communique, the level of disunity in the IMFC statements that have emerged at these Annuals Meetings is significant, as is the Fund’s increasing efforts to be seen to be aligned with the US administration’s position.
