Quote Originally Posted by Surferbeetle View Post
The IMF provides interesting datapoints and can be commended for many things but its relevance/authority/direction is being challenged. This is not necessarily a knock, but if you are up for sharing references, as always, they would be greatly appreciated.
I've worked fairly extensively with IMF folks and data in the past in Palestine, and in general they did excellent work in promoting greater fiscal transparency and accountability, tracing irregular financial flows, measuring key benchmarks, and providing technical assistance to the Palestinian MoF. (For many years the current Palestinian PM, Salam Fayyad, was the IMF rep to the WB/Gaza). There is considerable information and analysis on their website.

My broader point is that even when we may choose to ignore them—either because we think they're wrong, or because we think their failing to see the broader picture—its useful to have the IMF focused on issues of fiscal solvency, since no one else in the development community has quite that mandate.