Governments must place greater weight on keeping their finances in shape, or risk undermining the confidence of the bond market investors that buy their debt, the IMF has cautioned.
Rising interest rates and high inflation have increased the importance of countries building resilience into their public finances so they can deal with a more “shock-prone” world, the IMF said on Wednesday in its annual Fiscal Monitor publication.
In a reversal of the message of previous years, the IMF ditched its calls for governments to borrow more, saying greater debt levels were no longer appropriate now that interest rates needed to rise to defeat the widespread inflation threat.