The Executive Board of the International Monetary Fund (IMF) has reviewed two noncomplying disbursements to the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) under its Extended Credit Facility (ECF) arrangement with the IMF. The two noncomplying disbursements related to the existence of external payments arrears amounting to US$18.2 million. Since these arrears were not reported to the Executive Board before the completion of the second and third ECF program reviews, the disbursements were noncomplying. The DRC authorities have since cleared all the relevant external payments arrears and are implementing a number of actions to strengthen debt management to avoid a similar occurrence in future.

After considering the circumstances of the noncomplying disbursements and corrective actions taken by the DRC authorities, the Executive Board on January 26, 2012, granted waivers for the nonobservance of the continuous performance criterion on the accumulation of external payments arrears that led to the two noncomplying disbursements. The Executive Board’s decision was taken on a lapse-of-time basis.¹

The three-year ECF arrangement for the DRC was approved on December 11, 2009, (see Press Release No. 09/455) in an amount equivalent to SDR 346.45 million (about US$536.1 million, or 65 percent of the country’s quota in the Fund). DRC has been a member of the Fund since September 1963.

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¹ The Executive Board takes decisions under its lapse-of-time procedure when it is agreed by the Board that a proposal can be considered without convening formal discussions.