The last global financial crisis made clear that the International Monetary System needs strong financial backstops to provide crisis-time liquidity to countries hit directly by large economic shocks or affected by crisis contagion. In this context, the so-called Global Financial Safety Net (GFSN) should be strengthened. The GFSN refers to the different layers of resources for crisis prevention and resolution, which come mainly from (i) international reserves held by national central banks, (ii) bilateral swap arrangements between central banks (BSAs), (iii) Regional Financing Arrangements (RFAs), and (iv) the International Monetary Fund (IMF). Among the four layers of the GFSN, foreign reserves and bilateral swap arrangements are policy tools at the discretion of national authorities, while tapping resources from RFAs, where available, or the IMF requires multilateral decision-making. Therefore, the coordination and collaboration issues concern mostly the two latter layers of the safety net.

In this context, a group of RFAs agreed to jointly consider how to improve collaboration with the IMF in the future, building on current working relations and cooperation experience, particularly focusing on a number of issues relevant to all RFAs, such as information sharing, capacity building, and our common quest for best practice in crisis prevention and management.