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International Monetary Fund. Institute for Capacity Development
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International Monetary Fund. Legal Dept.
The Staff Operational Guidance on Dissemination of Capacity Development Information sets forth procedures on the dissemination of capacity development information, based on the objectives of wider, more active, and timelier sharing of information while safeguarding the Fund’s candor and role as trusted advisor. The guidance draws from internal consultations and Executive Directors’ views on the Updated Framework on the Dissemination of Capacity Development Information.
Miss Sonali Das
This paper analyzes how the leverage of financial institutions affects their demand for assets and the resulting value of transactions between financial institutions. The results show a positive relationship between buyer capital and the likelihood of buying assets, and between buyer capital and the value of the deal. That is, those institutions that are the least constrained in their ability to raise funding are those that demand assets and pay more for them. This result does not hold, however, for deposit-taking institutions that had access to several government programs designed to improve their liquidity position during the crisis of 2008.
Axel Dreher
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Steffen Lohmann
This paper brings the aid effectiveness debate to the sub-national level. We hypothesize the nonrobust results regarding the effects of aid on development in the previous literature to arise due to the effects of aid being insufficiently large to measurably affect aggregate outcomes. Using geocoded data for World Bank aid to a maximum of 2,221 first-level administrative regions (ADM1) and 54,167 second-level administrative regions (ADM2) in 130 countries over the 2000-2011 period, we test whether aid affects development, measured as nighttime light growth. Our preferred identification strategy exploits variation arising from interacting a variable that indicates whether or not a country has passed the threshold for receiving IDA's concessional aid with a recipient region's probability to receive aid, in a sample of 478 ADM1 regions and almost 8,400 ADM2 regions from 21 countries. Controlling for the levels of the interacted variables, the interaction provides a powerful and excludable instrument. Overall, we find significant correlations between aid and growth in ADM2 regions, but no causal effects.
International Monetary Fund. Asia and Pacific Dept
KEY ISSUES Context. Donor-financed large infrastructure projects, increased public spending, and a pick-up in credit to households have boosted real GDP growth to close to 4 percent in 2014 and to about 3 percent in 2015. Inflation remains low, underpinned by lower food and commodity prices. Steps are being taken to reduce the many hurdles to private growth that Kiribati faces, among which are high transportation and communication costs and an increasing impact of climate change. Fiscal policy. The fiscal outlook has improved, but further efforts are needed to ensure sustainability. The recurrent balance was in large surplus in 2014 and is expected to remain positive in 2015, reflecting high revenue from license fees, and notwithstanding a large increase in expenditures. But under the historic pace of spending the sovereign wealth fund (Revenue Equalization Reserve Fund—RERF) would be depleted in about 20 years. Ensuring sustainability requires containing nominal expenditure growth to around 1½ per annum over the next five years (after accommodating climate-change-related costs), with transparent and symmetric transfers and withdrawals from the RERF around this path. Structural reforms. There is a consensus among donors that significant progress has been achieved. The State-Owned Enterprise (SOE) Reform Act is being implemented in a satisfactory way, as illustrated by the recent successful privatization of the telecommunication company. Key outstanding issues include further reforming the energy and copra sectors and improving the investment climate.
International Monetary Fund. Asia and Pacific Dept
KEY ISSUES Kiribati’s key economic challenges are to reduce large structural fiscal imbalances and increase growth and employment opportunities, while facing obstacles posed by remoteness, lack of scale, vulnerabilities to external shocks and climate change. The significant fiscal consolidation envisaged by the authorities will help stabilize Kiribati’s sovereign wealth fund (the Revenue Equalization Reserve Fund, or RERF) in real per capita terms. This stabilization effort would also require that fishing license fees remain close to recent exceptionally high levels, with windfall incomes relative to the conservative budgeted baseline saved. In the event of weaker fishing license fee revenues, a more ambitious adjustment in the non-fishing budget would be needed. The small private sector share in the economy due to remoteness and weaknesses in business climate constrains growth and puts strain on public finances. Continuing the fiscal and structural reform program is essential. Climate change brings additional risks and fiscal costs. Main Recommendations: • Continue fiscal reforms designed to deliver fiscal consolidation and improved public financial management. Seek to maintain fishing license fees above the current conservative budget baseline, with windfalls saved to strengthen RERF balances. If fishing license fee windfalls cannot be sustained, explore other options to further strengthen fiscal balances. • Continue reforms of state-owned enterprises (SOEs). • Facilitate growth through improving the business climate and infrastructure, including through streamlining government services.
International Monetary Fund. Asia and Pacific Dept
Kiribati is one of the poorest and most remote microstates in the Pacific. It is highly dependent on volatile fishing license fees, remittances, and donor assistance. The challenge is to implement fiscal and structural reforms to help ensure fiscal sustainability, promote private sector development, and increase its resilience to external shocks. Fully using its marine potential beyond fishing license fees will help to improve fiscal revenues and growth opportunities. More generally, private sector development is critical for both increasing growth and reducing fiscal pressures.
Mr. Robert Blotevogel
I propose a new approach to identifying exogenous monetary policy shocks in low-income countries with capital account restrictions. In the case of Mauritania, a domestic repatriation requirement is the key institutional characteristic that allows me to establish exogeneity. Unlike in advanced countries, I find no evidence for a statistically significant impact of exogenous monetary policy shocks on bank lending. Using a unique bank-level dataset on monthly balance sheets of six Mauritanian banks over the period 2006–11, I estimate structural vector autoregressions and two-stage least square panel models to demonstrate the ineffectiveness of monetary policy. Finally, I discuss how a reduction in banks’ loan concentration ratios and improvements in the liquidity management framework could make monetary stimuli more effective.
International Monetary Fund
In recent years, the IMF has released a growing number of reports and other documents covering economic and financial developments and trends in member countries. Each report, prepared by a staff team after discussions with government officials, is published at the option of the member country.
International Monetary Fund
The 2008 Article IV Consultation with Solomon Islands discusses an economic outlook that hinges critically on developing nonlogging sources of growth and exports to offset the expected decline in logging activity. The country remains beset with poor infrastructure, land ownership issues, a shortage of skilled labor, and unreliable and costly basic services. Executive Directors recommended that the central bank seek to develop financial markets further and make greater use of interest rate mechanisms of monetary control. To avoid placing undue burden on monetary policy, fiscal policy needs to play a supportive role.
International Monetary Fund
This Tax Summary and Statistical Appendix for the Solomon Islands outlines the summary of various taxes. Residents are taxed on their worldwide income. Nonresidents are taxed on income sourced from the Solomon Islands. Both resident and nonresident investors undertaking commercial, economic, industrial or professional activity in the Solomon Islands may apply to the Commissioner of Inland Revenue for an exemption from income tax. An excise duty is levied on plugs, twist, fig, stick, cake, and coarse cut tobacco, and on beer and cigarettes produced in the Solomon Islands.