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Benin
2024 Selected Issues
Kingdom of Swaziland
This Selected Issues paper assesses Swaziland’s export diversification and quality. Swaziland’s export structure has experienced sizable changes over the past 15 years. The share of textile exports has halved, and the expiration of trade benefits under Africa Growth Opportunity Act (AGOA) implies that the share of textile exports would decline further. Swaziland’s exports are relatively diversified with good quality index compared with its peers. However, diversification and product quality have declined in recent years, while the expiration of the access to AGOA calls for enhanced efforts in this area. Improving education and training, strengthening institutional framework, and further developing the financial market will help improve export diversification and quality upgrading.
South Africa
This paper describes South Africa’s economic development and challenges. South Africa has made considerable economic and social progress over the past two decades, but faces substantial challenges. Global transitions—China’s slowdown and rebalancing, weak commodity prices, and U.S. monetary policy normalization—are taking a heavy toll on South Africa. Growth and employment, which were already low, are faltering and continue to underperform peer countries. Vulnerabilities remain elevated and have increased in the real and fiscal sectors. Boosting growth and job creation, thus reducing extremely high unemployment and inequality, and promoting social transformation remain South Africa’s key challenges.
Indonesia
Indonesia’s growth remains strong despite external headwinds. Inflation is firmly in the target range and the financial sector is resilient. The authorities have been pursuing an ambitious growth agenda to reach high-income status by 2045. This comprises public spending, institutional reforms, and Industrial Policy (IP). Risks are broadly balanced. Key downside risks include persistent commodity price volatility (e.g., from geopolitical shocks), an abrupt slowdown in Indonesia’s key trading partners, or adverse spillovers from tighter-for-longer global financial conditions. On the domestic side, a weakening of long-standing sound macro-fiscal frameworks could hamper policy credibility. On the upside, stronger-than-anticipated growth in trading partners or faster disinflation in AEs could prop up growth while deep structural reforms would raise growth over the medium term.
Niger
This Selected Issues paper presents an external stability assessment on Niger. Niger’s current account balance deteriorated in 2013, mostly on account of higher food and capital goods imports. The deficit is expected to widen further in 2014–15, mainly driven by large investment in the extractive industry and basic infrastructure. The current account is projected to gradually improve from 2016 as important projects in infrastructure will come to end, the oil and mining sectors come on stream and public and private savings increase. Although aid and foreign direct investments are the main sources of external financing, external borrowing–mainly on concessional terms–has increased significantly.
Namibia
This 2015 Article IV Consultation highlights that Namibia’s GDP growth slightly moderated to 4.2 percent in 2014, largely owing to lower global demand for Namibia’s main export commodities. Inflation remained contained, owing to low international commodity prices. The government’s large-scale fiscal program contributed to job creation, and unemployment declined somewhat. Namibia’s growth outlook is clouded with downside risks, while facing significant policy challenges. Its main policy challenges are therefore to strengthen its resilience to exogenous shocks and manage systemic risks in the financial sector, while promoting inclusive growth and job creation.
A Guide and Tool for Projecting Public Debt and Fiscal Adjustment Paths with Local- and Foreign-Currency Debt
This guide presents the analytical underpinnings and a user manual for the Excel-based Public Debt Dynamics Tool (DDT).
Internet Adoption Trends During COVID-19
This paper examines the common perception that internet adoption accelerated globally during the COVID-19 pandemic. The data show little evidence of a faster expansion of access to internet (extensive margin) across all country income groups but strong evidence of acceleration in the improvement in the quality of connectivity (intensive margin). The data also support that, despite a decline in internet prices over the past decade, affordability of digital services remains a concern for low-income developing countries.
Climate-Sensitive Management of Public Finances—"Green PFM”
Public financial management (PFM) consists of all the government’s institutional arrangements in place to facilitate the implementation of fiscal policies. In response to the growing urgency to fight climate change, “green PFM” aims at adapting existing PFM practices to support climate-sensitive policies. With the cross-cutting nature of climate change and wider environmental concerns, green PFM can be a key enabler of an integrated government strategy to combat climate change. This note outlines a framework for green PFM, emphasizing the need for an approach combining various entry points within, across, and beyond the budget cycle. This includes components such as fiscal transparency and external oversight, and coordination with state-owned enterprises and subnational governments. The note also identifies principles for effective implementation of a green PFM strategy, among which the need for a strong stewardship located within the ministry of finance is paramount.
The Economics of Growth
A comprehensive, rigorous, and up-to-date introduction to growth economics that presents all the major growth paradigms and shows how they can be used to analyze the growth process and growth policy design. This comprehensive introduction to economic growth presents the main facts and puzzles about growth, proposes simple methods and models needed to explain these facts, acquaints the reader with the most recent theoretical and empirical developments, and provides tools with which to analyze policy design. The treatment of growth theory is fully accessible to students with a background no more advanced than elementary calculus and probability theory; the reader need not master all the subtle...
