STUDY ECONOMY AND FINANCE UNDERSTANDING IMF DEBT SUSTAINABILITY ANALYSES A Toolkit for CSOs to critically engage with the IMF Kristina Rehbein October 2023 The IMF is a powerful gate­keeper for financing and debt relief and sets the macro­economic parameters and incentives for governments on how to deal with a critical external debt situation. At the centre of this are the IMF’s debt sustainability anal­yses. With a de facto monop­oly on these analyses comes a huge responsibility that the IMF does not always meet. Debt sustainability analyses are not just technical doc­uments but deeply political and relevant for CSOs, as the results will have an impact on the government’s policies and decisions and the social and economic rights of a coun­try’s citizens. The IMF has a track record of too-little-too-late debt relief and optimistic eco­nomic projections. CSOs should therefore have a crit­ical eye on the analyses of the IMF, which are the basis for how a shaky debt situa­tion is being dealt with.