‘The work of the IMF is of three main types. Surveillance involves the monitoring of economic and financial developments, and the provision of policy advice, aimed especially at crisis-prevention. The IMF also lends to countries with balance of payments difficulties, to provide temporary financing and to support policies aimed at correcting the underlying problems; loans to low-income countries are also aimed especially at poverty reduction. Third, the IMF provides countries with technical assistance and training in its areas of expertise. Supporting all three of these activities is IMF work in economic research and statistics. In recent years, as part of its efforts to strengthen the international financial system, and to enhance its effectiveness at preventing and resolving crises, the IMF has applied both its surveillance and technical assistance work to the development of standards and codes of good practice in its areas of responsibility, and to the strengthening of financial sectors. The IMF also plays an important role in the fight against money-laundering and terrorism’ (IMF website).

The IMF doesn’t get a good press from geographers, largely through its role in promoting structural adjustment policies: as a result of austerity programmes sponsored by the World Bank and the IMF, ‘the 1980s and 1990s were the “lost decades” for development in much of Africa’ (Carmody (2008) Geog. Compass 2, 1). Watts et al. (2005) PHG 29, 1 describe the IMF as one of the ungoverned bodies that regulate global capitalism, and D. Harvey (2004) argues that localized financial crises are in some sense intentionally managed by various US-sponsored agencies such as the International Monetary Fund under the guise of neoliberal economics, ‘thereby maintaining the United States as the global hegemon’.

http://www.imf.org/external/work.htm The IMF website.