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Abebe Aemro Selassie
,
Andrea Richter Hume
, and
Alfred Schipke

Abstract

Africa has made remarkable strides across many development metrics, significantly improving life expectancy, literacy, health, and education. With its population set to double to around 2 billion by 2050, Africa’s economic trajectory will increasingly shape global dynamics. Central to this growth story are Africa’s economic and financial linkages with China, reflected in robust trade, foreign direct investment, and financing flows. These connections are bolstered by institutional frameworks like the Forum on China-Africa Cooperation, which aim to strengthen and expand this partnership.  This book delves into the evolving Africa-China economic relationship, examining its many facets and the potential impact of China’s current trends on Africa’s future. It offers a multidimensional analysis, including the role of policy frameworks, capacity building, and fintech in promoting sustainable development. One chapter provides a comprehensive overview of official financing, detailing the Chinese government agencies driving the China-Africa economic partnership. Another explores the rapid evolution of fintech in both regions, highlighting its role in enhancing financial inclusion, spurring growth, and reducing income inequality. This offers valuable insights for other emerging markets and developing countries. The book also dedicates a chapter to China’s economic ties with the Maghreb countries, while discussions on global experiences in strengthening policy frameworks and capacity building offer crucial lessons for bolstering Africa’s institutional structures.   With China poised to contribute a quarter of global economic growth over the next five years, it will remain a key player in shaping Africa’s economic future. However, the slowing of China’s economy, and its ongoing structural changes, will present both challenges and opportunities for African nations. By focusing on this important and evolving driver of growth in Africa, this book complements the IMF’s ongoing policy dialogue and financial support to African countries. The IMF’s deep experience in analysing spillovers is particularly relevant for the book’s assessment of the channels through which developments in China affect Africa.

Marianne Bechara
,
Wouter Bossu
,
Amira Rasekh
,
Chia Yi Tan
, and
Akihiro Yoshinaga
In designing central bank digital currencies (CBDCs), it is imperative that central banks carefully consider its legal foundations. As with any form of money, CBDCs require a solid basis under public and private law to provide it with the necessary legal certainty and political support that will underpin its wide circulation. This Fintech Note examines the private law aspects of token-based CBDC primarily intended for retail use. It follows a previous IMF working paper that examines the legal foundations of CBDC under central bank law and its treatment under monetary law—the main public law aspects of CBDC.
Zamid Aligishiev
,
Michael Ben-Gad
, and
Joseph Pearlman
We present alternative methods for calculating and interpreting the influence of exogenous shocks on historical episodes within the context of DSGE models. We show analytically why different methods for calculating shock decompositions can generate conflicting interpretations of the same historical episodes. We illustrate this point using an extended version of Drautzburg and Uhlig’s (2015) model of the U.S. economy, focusing on the periods 1964–1966, 1979–1987, 2006–2009, 2016–2020 and 2020–2023. We argue that the best method for analyzing particular episodes is one which isolates the influence of the shocks during the period under consideration and where the initial conditions represent the system’s distance from balanced growth path at the beginning of the episode.
Dorothy Nampewo
This paper develops a Financial Conditions Index (FCI) for Qatar and uses the Growth-at-Risk (GaR) framework to examine the impact of financial conditions on Qatar’s non-hydrocarbon growth. The analysis shows that the FCI is an important leading indicator of Qatar’s non-hydrocarbon growth, highlighting its predictive potential for future economic performance. The GaR framework suggests that overall, the current downside risks to Qatar’s baseline non-hydrocarbon growth projections are relatively mild.
This Global Financial Stability Note examines the growth of the pension fund sector and the potential financial stability implications. Historically, pension funds have been seen as a contributor to financial stability because of their long-term and well-diversified liabilities. However, the sector has undergone significant structural shifts accelerated by a prolonged period of low interest rates, increasing its exposure to traditional risks while introducing emerging risks; this is reflected in growing intra-financial sector interconnectedness and exposure to long-term sovereign bonds. The recent transition to higher interest rates should be positive for the pension sector, albeit its pace and abruptness has been associated with liquidity stress and contagion risks in some countries.
Oleg Churiy
and
Bernard J Laurens
At the request of the Royal Monetary Authority of Bhutan (RMA), an IMF South Asia Regional Training and Technical Assistance Center (SARTTAC) visited Thimphu during August 20-29, 2024. The mission’s objectives were to assist the authorities in setting up interest rate corridor (IRC) and operationalizing the related instruments, operations, liquidity forecasting, and collateral frameworks.
International Monetary Fund. Asia and Pacific Dept
and
International Monetary Fund. Monetary and Capital Markets Department
In August 2024, at the request of the Royal Monetary Authority of Bhutan (RMA), the IMF South Asia Regional Training and Technical Assistance Center (SARTTAC) conducted a Technical Assistance (TA) mission in Thimphu. The mission aimed to assist the RMA in establishing an interest rate corridor (IRC) and operationalizing related instruments, liquidity forecasting, and collateral frameworks. The mission identified that the RMA lacks necessary monetary policy instruments to effectively address changing systemic liquidity conditions and financial stability challenges. It emphasized the need to move away from reliance on administrative controls, as the absence of appropriate price incentives reinforces the preference for foreign exchange among Bhutanese residents, increasing pressures on the peg. To tackle these issues, the mission proposed a phased approach to introduce the IRC. Initially, relevant external and internal documents should be finalized, followed by mock operations. The first phase involves introducing a one-week main Open Market Operation (OMO), conducted weekly at the policy rate with full allotment. Automatic access to the IRC's standing facilities should be ensured. Later, fixed-quantity, variable-rate OMOs should be utilized, relying on liquidity forecasting to calibrate operations. Additionally, the mission recommended reinstating sweeping arrangements for government accounts and enhancing coordination with the Treasury to improve liquidity forecasting. These measures aim to strengthen the RMA's operational framework and enhance the effectiveness of monetary policy.
International Monetary Fund. Monetary and Capital Markets Department
The 2017 FSAP focused its recommendations around strengthening and clarifying the mandates of the authorities. The FSAP noted that the multiple objectives of the organizations, together with the fact that there was no defined framework for cooperation and the separate control over prudential tools, created the risk that policies implemented by both agencies might come into conflict or have undesirable consequences and blur accountability lines.
International Monetary Fund. Monetary and Capital Markets Department
The FSAP team undertook a thorough top-down corporate and bank solvency, bank liquidity stress tests as well as analysis of interconnectedness using mid-2023 data. This note covers the methodology and results of the scenario-based solvency test, the single factor sensitivity analysis, the liquidity test, and interconnectedness analysis. The stress test exercise was carried out on a sample of 105 commercial banks. The analysis is heavily dependent on supervisory data on individual banks’ positions shared by the OJK and BI as well as publicly available information on corporate sector. While FSAP results are not directly comparable to the authorities’ own stress testing results due to differences in scenarios, methodologies, and objectives, they provide an assessment of the system-wide resilience of the Indonesian banking sector at the current juncture.
Tatsushi Okuda
The Chilean real estate sector has recently undergone adjustments which have increased the risks for the financial sector, but the system remains overall resilient. In the baseline, the real estate market is expected to modestly recover, and several factors mitigate credit risk. The buffers in the financial sector currently appear broadly adequate to absorb stresses from high long-term interest rates and the tail risk of a real estate crisis. Nevertheless, supervisors should monitor these risks closely, keep advancing in closing data gaps, and continue to extend stress test models to comprehensively capture real estate-specific risk factors.