A response to the IMF and World Bank LIC-DSF review
Clearing the Clogs
A plumber's guide to making the reformed LIC-DSF run at scale
On paper, the LIC-DSF is a framework. To the boards and creditors who act on it, a risk rating. To the roughly 70 countries that run it, an opaque, cumbersome spreadsheet.
Our response to the IMF and World Bank review takes the tool-maker's lane: three clogs (the operating manual that was never written, a workbook that cannot be tested, a long-term module missing its pipes) and four cheap fixes (a data dictionary, a clean rebuild to a published standard, a model connector with a shared parameter library, and a semiannual forum that keeps all three current). Order of magnitude: a one-time million-dollar effort against the half a billion a year the Fund already spends on capacity development.
