The Cen­tral Bank of Suri­name (CB­vS) says a team from the In­ter­na­tion­al Mon­e­tary Fund (IMF) is on a vis­it to the Dutch-speak­ing Caribbean Com­mu­ni­ty (CARI­COM) as part of an Ar­ti­cle IV mis­sion.

This ar­ti­cle of the IMF’s Ar­ti­cles of Agree­ment gov­erns the Fund’s over­sight of the eco­nom­ic and fi­nan­cial poli­cies of its mem­ber states and the mis­sion which ends its stay here on Fri­day is be­ing led by the new mis­sion chief for Suri­name, Al­ber­to Be­har.

“Now that Suri­name has com­plet­ed its IMF pro­gramme (in March 2025), the reg­u­lar 12-month Ar­ti­cle IV mis­sions will re­sume. How­ev­er, an in­ter­im mis­sion will con­tin­ue an­nu­al­ly as part of the post-IMF pro­gramme, dur­ing which, among oth­er things, the con­sis­ten­cy of our coun­try’s macro­eco­nom­ic frame­work will be as­sessed over the medi­um term,” the CB­vS said in a state­ment.

It said that the con­sul­ta­tions with the CB­vS con­cern both pol­i­cy and op­er­a­tional mat­ters and cov­er a wide range of top­ics, “par­tic­u­lar­ly mon­e­tary and ex­change rate pol­i­cy and re­lat­ed op­er­a­tions, in­clud­ing open mar­ket op­er­a­tions and for­eign ex­change in­ter­ven­tions”.

In Au­gust, the Suri­name gov­ern­ment says it would not en­ter in­to a new agree­ment with the IMF sim­i­lar to the one that had been suc­cess­ful­ly im­ple­ment­ed by the San­tokhi gov­ern­ment.

“We will not im­ple­ment an IMF pro­gramme like we had,” Pres­i­dent Jen­ny Geer­lings-Si­mons said, adding, “but we will cer­tain­ly re­main on speak­ing terms to help us with our fi­nan­cial af­fairs, to pro­vide ad­vice on this, and to help strength­en in­sti­tu­tions.”

In 2021, the IMF ex­ec­u­tive board ap­proved Suri­name’s Ex­tend­ed Fund Fa­cil­i­ty (EFF) US$572 mil­lion arrange­ment with the coun­try pur­su­ing 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, which end­ed ear­li­er this year, 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.

CMC/aj/ir/2025

PARA­MARI­BO, Suri­name, Nov 18, CMC –