Definition
A standing Fed facility that lets foreign central banks borrow dollars overnight against their US Treasury holdings instead of selling those Treasuries.
FIMA stands for Foreign and International Monetary Authorities — the central banks and international institutions that hold accounts at the New York Fed. The Fed opened the facility in March 2020, when the dash for cash was pushing foreign official holders to liquidate Treasuries into an already broken market, and made it standing in July 2021 alongside the domestic SRF. Mechanically a FIMA counterparty sells Treasuries to the Fed with an agreement to buy them back the next day, paying the IORB rate plus a spread. The signal value is twofold: a non-zero reading means an official-sector dollar shortage that the private repo market did not clear, and it simultaneously means a foreign holder chose the Fed over dumping duration on the market — so the facility working correctly looks like a stress print in the data and a suppressed shock in Treasury prices. Usage peaked at $60B on 2023-03-22, in the week of the SVB failure and the Credit Suisse rescue. Reported weekly on the H.4.1 line "Repurchase agreements: Foreign official" (FRED: H41RESPPALGTRFNWW). Because that is a Wednesday snapshot of an overnight facility, draws taken and repaid between Wednesdays never appear, and no daily series exists — treat zero as "no usage on Wednesday", not "no usage". On DollarLiquidity.com the series is display-only offshore reference and does not enter the DLI score.