Washington, DC — The Executive Board of the International Monetary Fund approved the 2025-27 financial years (FY25-27) medium-term budget. While the global economy has shown resilience to successive adverse shocks, the overall global economic context remains complex with slow and uneven growth, increased fragmentation, deepening divergence, and still high interest rates despite easing inflationary pressures. This environment has contributed to sustained high demand for Fund financial support, and more granular and country-tailored policy analysis, advice, and capacity development. The Board recognized the imperative for the Fund to continue to adapt to members' evolving needs, helping them safeguard macroeconomic stability and rebuild buffers while bolstering international cooperation to support ongoing structural transitions requiring joint action.
The Board noted that the Fund's budget is in a transition period. This reflects both the unwinding of temporary resources that helped address urgent pandemic-related work as well as the completion of the three-year structural augmentation to help members tackle macro-critical challenges related to climate, digital money, macrofinancial surveillance, fragility, and inequality. Against this backdrop and recognizing the sustained high workload and demands on Fund staff, the Board emphasized the importance of reprioritization to support the continued budget agility and discipline which guided the formulation of the FY25-27 budget and of strong cooperation with other institutions. They also welcomed the commitment to return to a flat real budget trajectory in FY26.
The approved net administrative budget for FY25 (May 1, 2024–April 30, 2025) totals US$1,501 million, consistent with projected income and the path for the precautionary balances target. The budget includes the final tranche of the structural augmentation (2 percent of the net administrative budget) in support of work towards a greener, digital, and more inclusive global economy. It also includes a one-off increase for the Executive Board to restore staffing levels to those before the 2008 downsizing, support the creation of a 25th chair, and address broader work pressures, after incorporating internal savings. The maximum amount of unused budget resources that can be carried forward from previous years will be reduced from 6 to 5 percent of the underlying budget to continue the gradual unwinding of temporary pandemic-related resourcing introduced in FY21.
The Board also endorsed the final of a three-year step increase in the externally funded spending limit approved last year to support capacity development (CD) efforts in the structural transformation areas.
The FY25 capital budget is set at US$122 million and will support facilities investments—among them, lifecycle replacements and upgrades to field offices—as well as IT-intensive investments, including associated cloud license costs.
Additional information can be found in the staff paper on the FY25-27 Medium-Term Budget (link to be added).
