The International Monetary Fund has announced to extend its flexible access to emergency funding for an additional 18 months to help nations severely impacted by the Covid-19 pandemic. According to a press statement, the IMF’s Executive Board approved 18-month extensions (through end-June 2023) of the temporary increases to the cumulative access limits under its emergency financing instruments, i.e., the Rapid Financing Instrument (RFI) regular window, the Rapid Credit Facility (RCF) Exogenous Shock window, and the RFI’s and RCF’s Large Natural Disaster (LND) windows and allowed all other access limits that had been temporarily increased to return to their pre-pandemic levels from January 1, 2022 as scheduled. This decision reflects the expected and ongoing gradual shift to upper-credit-tranche (UCT) quality arrangements from emergency financing triggered by urgent, pandemic-related balance of payment (BoP) needs. At the same time, the decision ensures continued access by member countries to the Fund’s emergency financing, should urgent BoP needs arise when a UCT-quality arrangement is either not necessary or not feasible, said the statement.