Archived Series > World Economic and Financial Surveys
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With less than five years left to achieve the MDGs, this year's report looks at the prospects and challenges for reaching the goals. It also examines the great diversity of performance across indicators, countries, and categories of countriesto determine the necessary policies to fill the remaining gaps.
Abstract
What is the human cost of the global economic crisis? This year’s Global Monitoring Report, The MDGs after the Crisis, examines the impact of the worst recession since the Great Depression on poverty and human development outcomes in developing countries. Although the recovery is under way, the impact of the crisis will be lasting and immeasurable. The impressive precrisis progress in poverty reduction will slow, particularly in low-income countries in Africa. No household in developing countries is immune. Gaps will persist to 2020. In 2015, 20 million more people in Sub-Saharan Africa will be in extreme poverty and 53 million more people globally. Even households above the $1.25-a-day poverty line in higher-income developing countries are coping by buying cheaper food, delaying other purchases, reducing visits to doctors, working longer hours, or taking multiple jobs. The crisis will also have serious costs on human development indicators: • 1.2 million more children under age five and 265,000 more infants will die between 2009 and 2015. • 350,000 more students will not complete primary education in 2015. • 100 million fewer people will have access to safe drinking water in 2015 because of the crisis. History tells us that if we let the recovery slide and allow the crisis to lead to widespread domestic policy failures and institutional breakdowns in poor countries, the negative impact on human development outcomes, especially on children and women, will be disastrous. The international financial institutions and international community responded strongly and quickly to the crisis, but more is needed to sustain the recovery and regain the momentum in achieving the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs). Developing countries will also need to implement significant policy reforms and strengthen institutions to improve the efficiency of service delivery in the face of fiscal constraints. Unlike previous crises, however, this one was not caused by domestic policy failure in developing countries. So better development outcomes will also hinge on a rapid global economic recovery that improves export conditions, terms-oftrade, and affordable capital flows—as well as meeting aid commitments to low-income countries. Global Monitoring Report 2010, seventh in this annual series, is prepared jointly by the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund. It provides a development perspective on the global economic crisis and assesses the impact on developing countries—their growth, poverty reduction, and other MDGs. Finally, it sets out priorities for policy responses, both by developing countries and by the international community.
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This paper assesses the issues of government involvement in international trade finance stemming from the recent changes in global financial markets. This study is based on discussions with representatives of export credit agencies during the period from October 2003 to May 2004. A survey of 27 agencies provided valuable insights. Financial flows facilitated by official export credit agencies are large in comparison with official development assistance and gross lending by international financial institutions to developing countries. However, the importance of officially supported trade finance has been declining relative to the rapid expansion of world trade and total capital flows to developing countries. The study highlights the key challenges facing official export credit agencies, including complementing the private sector, facilitating financing to low-income countries while helping maintain these countries’ debt sustainability, and playing a positive role in the area of trade finance in international efforts to address emerging market financial crises.
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This study provides information on official financing for developing countries with the focus on low and lower-middle-income countries. It updates the 1995 edition and reviews developments in direct financing by offical and multilateral sources. Topics of interest include external debt sustainability for heavily indebted poor countries; new official financing flows to developing countries; developments in export credits;financing from multilateral institutions; debt restructuring by official bilateral creditors; plus, numerous appendices.
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This study surveys recent trends in private market financing for developing countries. In addition to examining developments in flows to developing countries through banking and securites markets, it analyzes the institutional and regulatory framework for developing country finance, institutional investor behavior and pricing of developing country stocks, management of public sector debt and implications of private external borrowing for macroeconomic policy management, and progress in commercial bank debt restructuring in low-income countries
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This study reviews major issues and developments in trade and their implications for the work of the IMF. Volume I, The Uruguay Round and Beyond: Principal Issues, gives an overview of the issues and developments in the world trading system. Volume II, The Uruguay Round and Beyond: Background Papers, presents detailed background papers on selected trade and trade-related issues. This study updates previous studies published under the title Issues and Development in International Trade Policy.
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This paper reports the growing number of low-income countries that are making efforts to resolve their debt problems, often aided by the resources of the debt reduction facility for countries of the International Development Association (IDA). Progress for most, however, remains slow. With the backing of IDA resources and assistance from official bilateral sources, debt buy-backs have been concluded by Bolivia, Guyana, Mozambique, Niger, Sao Tome and Principe, Uganda, and Zambia. Preliminary discussions on similar operations are under way with several other countries. Although most of the major baric debt cases have been resolved, attention still needs to be focused on the problems of low-income countries. In many of these countries, the process of debt restructuring has been delayed owing to economic and political difficulties. To maintain market access on reasonable terms, countries need consistently to implement strong macroeconomic and structural policy programs. Maintenance of such programs is likely to be particularly important in the period ahead, given the high degree of uncertainty with regard to interest rate movements in the industrial countries.
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This paper presents the international financial markets aspects of the current turbulence in emerging markets. The ongoing international diversification of institutional portfolios, the return of flight capital, and the cyclical developments in industrial countries combined to generate a significant volume of capital flows into emerging markets in the developing world. In keeping with developments in global markets, these flows have increasingly been in the form of purchases of tradable bonds, equities, and money market instruments—securities that can readily be sold when sentiments change. The volume of financial wealth that can flee a developing country is now sufficiently large that it can overwhelm any attempt to maintain an exchange rate incompatible with fundamentals. Thus the possibility for investors—domestic and foreign—to exert discipline over policy has strengthened significantly. The resolution of sovereign debt-servicing difficulties has become more complicated with the changes in instruments and participants in international markets.
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This paper provides information on private market financing for developing countries, covering developments since August 1992. Progress in dealing with bank debt problems has been based in large part on persistence in the pursuit of stabilization and reform programs. Such programs have resulted in strengthened external positions that have allowed debtor countries to accumulate reserves for use in debt-reduction operations. All of the countries where negotiations are now continuing had at some point suspended payments on medium- and long-term debt. Banks have recognized that resumption of regular (albeit partial) payments can be politically difficult in the absence of a quid pro quo. The group of middle-and lower-middle income countries with debt problems still to come to terms with bank creditors on debt-reduction packages is now limited. Many of these remaining countries (including Bulgaria, Ecuador, Panama, Peru, and Poland) have already begun negotiations with creditor banks.
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This paper reviews recent developments in private market financing for developing countries. Bank creditors themselves have been more amenable to restructuring in an environment where secondary market discounts on bank claims were falling significantly below the level of bank provisioning. This has allowed banks to realize substantial book profits by participating in debt operations. Debt conversions have also played a substantial role in reducing commercial bank debt. The pace of such conversions, however, has slowed over the past year in response to lower secondary market discounts on external debt and to a drop in privatization-related conversions. The re-entry to international capital markets by certain middle-income countries that had experienced debt-servicing difficulties gathered momentum over the past year. Total bond issues in international markets by the main re-entrants accounted for over half of issues by developing countries in this period. In contrast to the experience in securities markets, new bank lending to market re-entrants has remained limited and is confined mainly to short-term trade lines or project financing.