IMF to examine finance sectors of 7 economies

WASHINGTON

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The International Monetary Fund (IMF) will keep financial sectors of seven countries, including Turkey, under spotlight this year, the global crisis lender said in a blog post on Feb. 4.

“Many countries entered the pandemic with strong bank capital and supervisory frameworks. Nonetheless, as economies recover from the pandemic, uncertainties remain regarding the underlying state of banks and other intermediaries,” it said.

This year’s assessments will address seven economies with systemically important financial sectors: Germany, United Kingdom, Mexico, Russia, Turkey and Ireland, which are reviewed every five years, and South Africa, which is assessed once every 10 years.

The others, which requested the assessments themselves, are Colombia, Uruguay and the West African Economic and Monetary Union.

Turkey’s bank-dominated financial system has grown rapidly in recent years. The IMF “will analyze the resilience of the banking and corporate sectors to adverse shocks, along with bank-corporate-sovereign interlinkages,” according to the blog post.

“Other evaluations will include the strength of banking supervision and regulation, the macroprudential framework, systemic liquidity management, the crisis management framework, and cyber risks,” it added.

Meanwhile, Argentina on Feb. 4 paid $370 million to the IMF as interest on a $44 billion debt that was rescheduled late last month, officials said.

It was the second payment of the year by Argentina, after a transfer of approximately $700 million last month.