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Reserves remain a critical liquidity buffer for most countries. They are generally associated with lower crisis risks (crisis prevention) as well as space for authorities to respond to shocks (crisis mitigation). While other instruments, such as official credit lines and bilateral swap lines, are also external buffers, for most countries they principally act as a complement to their official reserves. For countries with sound fundamentals and a good policy framework, reserves provide policy makers with considerable space to respond to transitory shocks. However, this space diminishes as fundamentals deteriorate and the existence of adequate reserves does not, by itself, eliminate the risk of market pressures.

These guidelines are intended to assist countries in strengthening their policy frameworks for reserve management so that they can become more resilient to shocks that may originate from global financial markets or within the domestic financial system. The guidelines have been developed as part of a broader IMF work program to help strengthen international financial architecture, to promote policies and practices that contribute to stability and transparency in the financial sector, and to reduce external vulnerabilities of member countries.

This update of the guidelines published in 2001 sets forth the underlying framework for the Reserves Data Template and provides operational advice for its use. The updated version also includes three new appendices aimed at assisting member countries in reporting the required data.

Reserves have a central place in the policy tool kit of most economies, providing insurance against shocks. In conjunction with sound policies, they can help reduce the likelihood of balance of payment crises and preserve economic and financial stability. Reserves, however, can result from both precautionary and non-precautionary policy objectives and institutional settings. While they can bring several important benefits, reserve holdings can sometimes be costly. This paper brings together recent Fund work on reserve adequacy issues aiming to strengthen their discussion in bilateral surveillance. Despite the ongoing debate on reserve issues, there is little consensus about how to assess reserve holdings in different economies, even though this is an important aspect of a member’s external stability assessment. The work stream of which this paper is part aims to fill this gap by outlining a framework for discussing reserve adequacy issues in different economies. In this regard, the paper also forms part of the Fund’s response to the 2012 IEO evaluation of the Fund’s advice related to international reserves, which recommended, inter alia, that assessments of international reserves in bilateral surveillance reports should be more detailed and reflect country circumstances. To this end, the paper proposes that, where warranted, individual country Article IV reports include a fuller discussion of the authorities’ stated objectives (precautionary and non-precautionary) for holding reserves, an assessment of the reserve needs for precautionary purposes, and a discussion of the cost of reserves. The aim would be to ensure evenhandedness so that countries with similar circumstances are assessed in similar ways, while allowing the depth and emphasis of this discussion to vary depending on country conditions and needs

Assessing country risk is a core component of surveillance at the IMF. It is conducted through a comprehensive architecture, covering both bilateral and multilateral dimensions. This note describes some of the approaches used internally by Fund staff to examine a wide array of systemic risks across advanced, emerging, and low-income economies. It provides a high-level view of the theory and methodologies employed, with an on-line companion guide providing more technical details of implementation. The guide will be updated as Fund staff’s methodologies for assessing country risk continue to evolve with experience and feedback. While the results of these approaches are not published by the IMF for market sensitivity reasons, they inform risk assessments featured in bilateral surveillance as well as in the IMF’s flagship publications on global surveillance.

Most central banks oblige depository institutions to hold minimum reserves against their liabilities, predominantly in the form of balances at the central bank. The role of these reserve requirements has evolved significantly over time. The overlay of changing purposes and practices has the result that it is not always fully clear what the current purpose of reserve requirements is, and this necessarily complicates thinking about how a reserve regime should be structured. This paper describes three main purposes for reserve requirements - prudential, monetary control and liquidity management - and suggests best practice for the structure of a reserves regime. Finally, the paper illustrates current practices using a 2010 IMF survey of 121 central banks.

The paper revisits the two-pillar framework for assessing the adequacy of Fund resources. Responding to Directors suggestions, the quantitative pillar is updated to include alternative assumptions and to provide a longer-term perspective on likely resource needs. While quantitative estimates are generally somewhat lower after factoring in the alternative assumptions, these reductions are more than outweighed when the analysis is extended through the middle of the next decade, recognizing that the outcome of the 15th Review will likely determine permanent Fund resources through at least the middle of the next decade. The updated qualitative pillar analysis highlights reforms since the global financial crisis and discusses uncertainties in the global environment. It also provides an assessment of the general impact of the various qualitative considerations. Taken together, the two pillars continue to make a case for at least maintaining existing Fund resources. Against this background, the simulations in the paper cover three illustrative sizes for quota increases (50, 75, and 100 percent), centered on broadly maintaining Fund resources, assuming the New Arrangements to Borrow (NAB) is maintained at its current level and Bilateral Borrowing Agreements (BBAs) expire.