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Pakistan
This Selected Issues paper provides an overview of social safety nets (SSNs) in Pakistan and uses a frontier analysis approach to assess their efficiency in reducing poverty and inequality. SSNs in Pakistan were significantly strengthened over time but remain small against regional and emerging markets’ averages. The analysis suggests that stepping up public expenditure in SSNs is needed to alleviate still high poverty and inequality. To this end, finalizing the update of the Benazir Income Support Program beneficiaries’ database, broadening its coverage, and stepping up educational transfers is key. In parallel, continuing the energy subsidies reform would create fiscal space to strengthen SSNs and priority social spending.
Finance and Inequality
The study examines empirical relationships between income inequality and three features of finance: depth (financial sector size relative to the economy), inclusion (access to and use of financial services by individuals and firms), and stability (absence of financial distress). Using new data covering a wide range of countries, the analysis finds that the financial sector can play a role in reducing inequality, complementing redistributive fiscal policy. By expanding the provision of financial services to low-income households and small businesses, it can serve as a powerful lever in helping create a more inclusive society but—if not well managed—it can amplify inequalities.
Gabon
This paper discusses impact of the falling oil prices on the Gabon’s economy. With oil accounting for roughly 40 percent of its GDP, 45 percent of its government revenues, and nearly 85 percent of its exports in 2014, Gabon’s economic growth prospects depend on how it copes with the recent oil-price slumps. Economic performance during major oil-price declines clearly illustrates the vulnerability of Gabon and other oil-dependent countries in sub-Saharan Africa. The recent oil-price slump is bound to generate a major deceleration of Gabon’s non-oil economy. Given the strength of the government transmission channel, the authorities should support economic activity (through productive spending) while ensuring fiscal sustainability.
How to Achieve Inclusive Growth
This is an open access title available under the terms of a CC BY-NC-ND 4.0 International licence. It is free to read at Oxford Scholarship Online and offered as a free PDF download from OUP and selected open access locations. Rising inequality and widespread poverty, social unrest and polarization, gender and ethnic disparities, declining social mobility, economic fragility, unbalanced growth due to technology and globalization, and existential danger from climate change are urgent global concerns of our day. These issues are intertwined. They therefore require a holistic framework to examine their interplay and bring the various strands together. Leading academic economists have partnered ...
Sub-Saharan African Migration
Amid rapid population growth, migration in sub-Saharan Africa has been increasing briskly over the last 20 years. Up to the 1990s, the stock of migrants—citizens of one country living in another country—was dominated by intraregional migration, but over the last 15 years, migration outside the region has picked up sharply. In the coming decades, sub-Saharan African migration will be shaped by an ongoing demographic transition involving an enlargement of the working-age population, and migration outside the region, in particular to advanced economies, is set to continue expanding. This note explores the main drivers of sub-Saharan African migration, focusing on migration outside the regio...
Uganda
This Selected Issues paper describes Uganda’s experience under the 2013 Policy Support Instrument (PSI). The current 2013 PSI was approved by the IMF’s Executive Board in June 2013 with an initial duration of three years. Overall, performance under this PSI has been assessed to be satisfactory. Most quantitative assessment criteria were met, and macroeconomic stability maintained. However, the pace of structural reforms slowed down compared with the past, and only about half of the structural benchmarks were ultimately met. The experience shows the importance of ensuring commitment to the reforms, explaining them better, and getting broad-based buy-in to achieve progress.
Republic of Equatorial Guinea
This Selected Issues paper analyzes macrofinancial linkages in Equatorial Guinea. Insufficient fiscal consolidation in response to falling oil prices and production has translated into arrears accumulation, leading to a sharp deterioration in commercial banks’ balance sheets. Although banks’ capital and liquidity ratio appear adequate, profitability has been shrinking, owing to weak economic activity and decelerating credit supply. Moreover, recent stress tests reveal a high sensitivity to negative liquidity and asset quality shocks. Financial development remains lackluster, which hurts economic development and effective structural transformation. Finally, strong macrofinancial linkages compounded by regional subsidiary-parent interlinkages call for increased scrutiny.
Islamic Republic of Afghanistan
This paper presents estimates of the fiscal revenue cost of conflict in Afghanistan, defined as the loss of government domestic revenue due to conflict. The loss of government revenue is an important component of the humanitarian costs of conflict. In Afghanistan, almost all security spending is funded by foreign grants, which will most likely be scaled back gradually in the event of peace. Hence, any fiscal peace dividend is likely to come principally from increased revenues, as reduced security spending will be mostly offset by reduced grants. Nevertheless, size and the statistical significance of the results suggest that the order of magnitude of the estimate, around $1 billion, is robust. By way of counterfactual, these results imply a sizeable potential fiscal dividend for Afghanistan should peace, or at least a significant reduction in violence, materialize. Several country-specific factors, including conflict and a landlocked geography, have held back an expansion in Afghanistan’s trade which could increase the country’s economic resilience. Improving its external connectivity is a key factor to unlocking its trade potential including leveraging its natural resources.
Macroeconomic Policy in Fragile States
Setting macroeconomic policy is especially difficult in fragile states. Macroeconomic Policy in Fragile States addresses the many issues involved and considers ways to improve the effectiveness of macroeconomic management in the face of these constraints.
IMF Staff Papers, Volume 55, No. 1
In this issue, a team of economists look at approaches to modeling the use of IMF resources in order to gauge whether the recent decline in credit outstanding is a temporary or permanent phenomenon. Era Dabla-Norris and Gabriela Inchauste examine what drives the growth of firms, with a focus on informality and regulations. Evan Tanner and Issouf Samake use a vector autoregression approach to examine the probabilistic sustainability of public debt in Brazil. Mexico, and Turkey. And Rachel Glennerster and Yongseok Shin ask whether transparency pays?that is, does the frequency and accuracy of macroeconomic information released to the public lead to lower borrowing costs in sovereign debt markets?
