Welcome to our book review site go-pdf.online!
You may have to Search all our reviewed books and magazines, click the sign up button below to create a free account.
FinTech in Sub-Saharan African Countries
FinTech is a major force shaping the structure of the financial industry in sub-Saharan Africa. New technologies are being developed and implemented in sub-Saharan Africa with the potential to change the competitive landscape in the financial industry. While it raises concerns on the emergence of vulnerabilities, FinTech challenges traditional structures and creates efficiency gains by opening up the financial services value chain. Today, FinTech is emerging as a technological enabler in the region, improving financial inclusion and serving as a catalyst for the emergence of innovations in other sectors, such as agriculture and infrastructure.
Evolving Banking Trends in Sub-Saharan Africa
Banking in SSA has undergone very significant changes over the last two decades. Financial liberalization and related reforms, upgrades in institutional and more recently the expansion of cross-border banking activities and the rapid development of Pan-African banking groups are signaling greater financial integration and significant changes in the African banking and financial landscape. Nonetheless, excess liquidity in many countries reflects limited lending opportunities and, despite improvements, asset quality and provisioning remain comparatively low. Dollarization has also been a persistent characteristic in several natural resource-dependent economies. This paper discusses key stylized facts and trends of banking development in SSA, looking at a variety of dimensions such as size, depth, soundness, and efficiency. It also assess the rapid expansion of pan-African banking groups, which have overtaken the role of the European and U.S. banks that had traditionally dominated banking activities in SSA, creating significant cross-border networks and becoming the largest participants in new syndicates and large bilateral loans to finance infrastructure development.
Financial Repression is Knocking at the Door, Again
Financial repression (legal restrictions on interest rates, credit allocation, capital movements, and other financial operations) was widely used in the past but was largely abandoned in the liberalization wave of the 1990s, as widespread support for interventionist policies gave way to a renewed conception of government as an impartial referee. Financial repression has come back on the agenda with the surge in public debt in the wake of the Global Financial Crisis, and some countries have reintroduced administrative ceilings on interest rates. By distorting market incentives and signals, financial repression induces losses from inefficiency and rent-seeking that are not easily quantified. This study attempts to assess some of these losses by estimating the impact of financial repression on growth using an updated index of interest rate controls covering 90 countries over 45 years. The results suggest that financial repression poses a significant drag on growth, which could amount to 0.4-0.7 percentage points.
Dollarization in Sub-Saharan Africa
Dollarization—the use of foreign currencies as a medium of exchange, store of value, or unit of account—is a notable feature of financial development under macroeconomically fragile conditions. It has emerged as a key factor explaining vulnerabilities and currency crises, which have long been observed in Latin America, parts of Asia, and Eastern Europe. Dollarization is also present, prominently, in sub-Saharan Africa (SSA) where it remains significant and persistent at over 30 percent rates for both bank loans and deposits—although it has not increased significantly since 2001. However, progress in reducing dollarization has lagged behind other regions and, in this regard, it is legitimate to ask whether this phenomenon is an important concern in SSA. This study fills a gap in the literature by analyzing these issues with specific reference to the SSA region on the basis of the evidence for the past decade.
Islamic Finance in Sub-Saharan Africa
Islamic finance is a fast growing activity in world markets. This paper provides a survey on Islamic Finance in SSA. Ongoing activities include Islamic banking, sukuk issuances (to finance infrastructure projects), Takaful (insurance), and microfinance. While not yet significant in most Sub-Saharan countries, several features make Islamic finance instruments relevant to the region, in particular the ability to foster SMEs and micro-credit activtities. As a first step, policy makers could introduce Islamic financing windows within the conventional system and facilitate sukuk issuance to tap foreign investors. The entrance of full-fleged Islamic banks require addressing systemic issues, and adapting the crisis management and resolution frameworks. The IMF can play a role by sharing international experiences and providing advice on supervisory and regulatory frameworks as needed.
Public Investment Efficiency in Sub-Saharan African Countries
There is significant room to improve public investment efficiency in sub-Saharan Africa. Investment in sub-Saharan African countries is lagging vis-à-vis peers such as emerging and developing Asia as well as Latin America and the Caribbean, and the region’s infrastructure is perceived as being of relatively low quality. Improving the efficiency of sizable investment programs in the region could contribute to more solid economic growth and help achieve desired social priorities and development goals. Results point to some variability in public investment efficiency within the region. Comparing efficiency scores across country groups suggests that investment efficiency in sub-Saharan Africa...
Sustaining more Inclusive Growth in the Republic of Congo
The Republic of Congo has seen dramatic improvement in its debt situation since 2010, following debt relief through the IMF and World Bank Heavily Indebted Poor Countries/Multilateral Debt Relief Initiative. Large oil revenues have allowed the country to boost spending and increase foreign exchange reserves. Yet poverty and inequality remain comparatively high. This paper examines Congo’s challenge to manage its natural resource revenue and attain sustained inclusive growth.
Drivers of Cross-Border Banking in Sub-Saharan Africa
Using data collected from pan-African banks’ (PABs), balance sheets and other sources (Orbis, Fitch), this study identifies some key patterns of cross-border investment in bank subsidiaries by key banking groups in sub-Saharan Africa (SSA) and discusses some of the determinants of this investment. Using a gravity model relating the annual value of a banking group’s investment in the net equity of its subsidiaries to a set of explanatory variables, the analysis finds that cross-border banking is in part driven by a search for yield, diversification, and expansion for strategic reasons.
From Stress to Costress
This paper presents an integrated framework for assessing systemic risk. The framework models banks’ capital asset ratios as a function of future losses and credit growth using a generalized method of moments to calibrate shocks to credit quality and credit growth. The analysis is complemented by a simple measure of systemic risk, which captures tail risk comovement among banks in the system. The main contribution of this paper is to advance a simple framework to integrate systemic risk scenarios that assess the impact of aggregate and idiosyncratic factors. The analysis is based on CreditRisk+, which uses analytical techniques—similar to those applied in the insurance industry - to estimate banks’ credit portfolio loss distributions, making no assumptions about the cause of default.
Macroprudential Frameworks in Asia
This Departmental Paper portrays a cross-country dimension of macroprudential policy implementation in Asia, advancing a comprehensive overview of institutional arrangements and instruments deployed by individual countries to address systemic risk, including risk concentration and interconnectedness. This book is the first comprehensive collection of papers assessing the existing institutional arrangements for macroprudential policies in Asia.
