Surveillance should focus on these areas alone, and on the potential spillover effects that these policies may have on other members. These are the priorities that reflect the reality of an increasingly integrated global economy. This is not to say that there is one single prescription for macroeconomic and financial policies that all countries must rigorously follow.
But what is important is that the particular policies chosen by a country must not hinder economic adjustment. The purpose of IMF surveillance must then be to determine whether the policies being followed by a country are coherent, and whether they have the potential to cause spillover effects in the rest of the world.