While the performance of the world economy has improved and the downward risks abated, this has not been reflected to any great extent in economic policies. With few exceptions, the stances of monetary and fiscal policies are still at the expansionary settings to which they were moved in order to offset the fall in asset prices and associated recessions in 2001.
There appear to be two reasons why SSA countries which don’t require emergency support for their BOP still implement IMF programs. First, the IMF provides an external “agent of restraint” to protect the macro economy from the short sightedness of domestic politicians and bureaucrats who might otherwise implement excessively expansionary macroeconomic policies if left to their own devises.