The Resilience and Sustainability Trust (RST) is a lending vehicle housed at the International Monetary Fund that provides long-term, affordable financing to help vulnerable countries address structural challenges, particularly climate change and pandemic preparedness, that pose macroeconomic risks to balance-of-payments stability.
The RST became operational in May 2022 and disburses loans through the Resilience and Sustainability Facility (RSF). Its core innovation is the channeling of Special Drawing Rights (SDRs) from wealthier IMF members—who received them in the August 2021 general allocation of roughly SDR 456 billion—to low-income and vulnerable middle-income countries that have greater need for long-term concessional finance.
Eligibility covers all low-income countries, all developing and vulnerable small states, and middle-income countries below a per-capita income threshold set by the IMF—encompassing roughly three-quarters of the Fund's membership. To access RSF financing, a country must have a concurrent IMF-supported program (such as a Stand-By Arrangement, Extended Fund Facility, or Policy Coordination Instrument) and must commit to a package of reforms tied to climate or pandemic resilience.
Key features include:
- Loan maturity of 20 years with a 10½-year grace period, far longer than standard IMF lending.
- Concessional interest rates below standard IMF charges, with the lowest rates reserved for the poorest borrowers.
- Access limits typically capped at 150% of quota or SDR 1 billion, whichever is lower.
Early borrowers have included Barbados, Costa Rica, Bangladesh, Jamaica, Rwanda, Kenya, and Senegal, with reform measures spanning carbon pricing, fossil-fuel subsidy reform, green public investment management, and disaster risk financing.
The RST has been praised for operationalizing SDR rechanneling, but criticized by some civil-society groups for adding IMF conditionality to climate finance and for relatively modest disbursement sizes relative to estimated adaptation needs. It complements, rather than replaces, dedicated climate funds such as the Green Climate Fund and the Loss and Damage Fund agreed at COP27 and COP28.
Example
In December 2022, Barbados became the first country to receive financing under the IMF's Resilience and Sustainability Facility, drawing on the RST to support climate-resilience reforms alongside an Extended Fund Facility program.