The In­ter­na­tion­al Mon­e­tary Fund (IMF) Mon­day says it is pro­vid­ing US$62 mil­lion to Suri­name af­ter its ex­ec­u­tive board ap­proved the ninth and fi­nal re­view un­der the Ex­tend­ed Fund Fa­cil­i­ty (EFF) arrange­ment with the Dutch-speak­ing Caribbean Com­mu­ni­ty (Cari­com) coun­try.

The Wash­ing­ton-based fi­nan­cial in­sti­tu­tion said the new funds bring to US$572 mil­lion, the to­tal pro­gramme and that in com­plet­ing the re­view, the ex­ec­u­tive board ap­proved Suri­name’s re­quest for a waiv­er of non-ob­ser­vance of the end-De­cem­ber 2024 per­for­mance cri­te­ria on the cen­tral gov­ern­ment pri­ma­ry bal­ance based on the cor­rec­tive ac­tions the au­thor­i­ties have al­ready tak­en.

In 2021, the IMF ex­ec­u­tive board ap­proved Suri­name’s EFF arrange­ment with the coun­try purs­ing an am­bi­tious eco­nom­ic re­form agen­da with the ob­jec­tive of restor­ing macro­eco­nom­ic sta­bil­i­ty and debt sus­tain­abil­i­ty, while lay­ing the foun­da­tions for strong and more in­clu­sive growth.

The pro­gramme fo­cused on restor­ing fis­cal and debt sus­tain­abil­i­ty, pro­tect­ing the poor and vul­ner­a­ble, up­grad­ing the mon­e­tary and ex­change rate pol­i­cy frame­work, ad­dress­ing bank­ing sec­tor vul­ner­a­bil­i­ties, and ad­vanc­ing the an­ti-cor­rup­tion and gov­er­nance re­form agen­da.

“The au­thor­i­ties’ re­forms un­der the EFF-sup­port­ed pro­gramme—the first ever to be com­plet­ed by Suri­name—are in­creas­ing­ly bol­ster­ing macro­eco­nom­ic sta­bil­i­ty and in­vestor con­fi­dence. The econ­o­my is grow­ing, in­fla­tion is ap­proach­ing sin­gle dig­its, in­ter­na­tion­al bond spreads are at record low lev­els, and donor sup­port is in­creas­ing,” said Ken­ji Oka­mu­ra, the IMF deputy man­ag­ing di­rec­tor and act­ing chair.

He said in view of the Fi­nal In­vest­ment De­ci­sion for the coun­try’s oil re­sources, it is crit­i­cal to put in place ro­bust in­sti­tu­tion­al frame­works, in­clud­ing fis­cal rules and im­proved trans­paren­cy and ac­count­abil­i­ty safe­guards.

Oka­mu­ra said such in­sti­tu­tion­al im­prove­ments will help Suri­name avoid pro­cycli­cal fis­cal pol­i­cy, pri­or­i­tize ur­gent de­vel­op­ment needs, en­sure in­ter­gen­er­a­tional eq­ui­ty, and trans­form ex­haustible re­source wealth in­to fi­nan­cial as­sets.

“The near-term pri­or­i­ty is to main­tain the path for debt re­duc­tion while pro­tect­ing the vul­ner­a­ble from the bur­den of the ad­just­ment. Grad­u­al­ly phas­ing out elec­tric­i­ty sub­si­dies and strength­en­ing tax ad­min­is­tra­tion will help cre­ate fis­cal space for high­er, tar­get­ed so­cial as­sis­tance and in­fra­struc­ture spend­ing.

“Ful­ly im­ple­ment­ing the re­cent­ly fi­nalised so­cial as­sis­tance re­form plan will make so­cial pro­grammes more ef­fi­cient and ef­fec­tive. Strength­en­ing fi­nan­cial man­age­ment con­trols in the state-owned elec­tric­i­ty com­pa­ny, in­clud­ing reg­u­lar­ly pub­lish­ing its au­dit­ed fi­nan­cial state­ments, will help pro­mote ac­count­abil­i­ty and over­sight,” he added.

Oka­mu­ra said the debt re­struc­tur­ing process is near­ing com­ple­tion and bi­lat­er­al agree­ments with all of­fi­cial cred­i­tors and all but one com­mer­cial cred­i­tor have been achieved.

He said do­mes­tic debt ar­rears have been cleared. Im­prov­ing com­mit­ment con­trols in the bud­get and ad­dress­ing weak­ness­es in cash man­age­ment will re­strain pub­lic spend­ing and pre­vent ac­cu­mu­la­tion of sup­pli­er ar­rears.

“A re­stric­tive mon­e­tary pol­i­cy is sup­port­ing dis­in­fla­tion. Re­cent im­ple­men­ta­tion of the agreed cen­tral bank re­cap­i­tal­iza­tion plan is a crit­i­cal step in en­sur­ing a strong cen­tral bank bal­ance sheet with clear op­er­a­tional and fi­nan­cial au­ton­o­my.

“The au­thor­i­ties’ demon­strat­ed com­mit­ment to a flex­i­ble, mar­ket-de­ter­mined ex­change rate is sup­port­ing in­ter­na­tion­al re­serve ac­cu­mu­la­tion. Time­ly im­ple­men­ta­tion of re­cap­i­tal­i­sa­tion plans for un­der­cap­i­talised com­mer­cial banks and im­prov­ing the mon­i­tor­ing of non-bank fi­nan­cial in­sti­tu­tions will help bol­ster fi­nan­cial sec­tor re­silience.”

Oka­mu­ra said Suri­name should per­se­vere with their am­bi­tious struc­tur­al re­form agen­da to strength­en in­sti­tu­tions, ad­dress gov­er­nance weak­ness­es, build cli­mate re­silience, im­prove da­ta qual­i­ty and ad­dress gen­der gaps.

“This im­por­tant work will con­tin­ue to be sup­port­ed by ca­pac­i­ty de­vel­op­ment from the Fund and oth­er de­vel­op­ment part­ners,” Oka­mu­ra said. (CMC)