Business and Economics > Finance: General

You are looking at 1 - 10 of 30 items for :

  • Type: Journal Issue x
Clear All Modify Search
International Monetary Fund. Asia and Pacific Dept
In August 2023, the IMF South Asia Regional Training and Technical Assistance Center (SARTTAC) undertook a Technical Assistance (TA) Mission at Bangladesh Bank (BB) to advise on the shift from a reserve money targeting monetary policy framework to an interest rate-focused one. This transition, announced by BB for July-December 2023, marks a significant policy shift, and it provides an opportunity to realign BB's governance and operational frameworks with the new monetary policy framework. Crucial to this transition is the amendment of the Bangladesh Bank Order (BBO) to give priority to price stability as the objective of monetary policy, to enhance BB's autonomy and accountability, and to eliminate direct BB lending to priority sectors. These modifications aim to align the governance structure with the objectives of the updated monetary policy framework. The mission suggested several key adjustments to the operational framework, including the implementation of a weekly 7-day Open Market Operation (OMO) at the policy rate; an increase in Cash Reserve Ratio (CRR) averaging; automatic access to Standing Facilities (SFs), and the harmonization of the legal framework for collateralized liquidity-providing monetary operations. Additionally, the mission proposed future measures to improve short-term liquidity forecasting and interbank market trading. Supportive measures were also recommended, such as normalizing the foreign exchange market with a clear exchange rate policy; engaging in money market development initiatives; participating in the Local Bond Market development project; and revising BB’s communications policy to enhance transparency. These reforms are designed to improve monetary policy transmission so as to support the achievement of BB’s its primary mandate of price stability, as a prerequisite for macroeconomic stability and stable economic growth.
International Monetary Fund. Monetary and Capital Markets Department
A Technical Assistance (TA) mission was conducted in Dhaka, Bangladesh, from March 5 to 9, 2023, to assist authorities in setting up a framework to assess physical climate risk in the financial system. The TA mission focused on (i) proposing a risk assessment framework tailored to available data, with a focus on the impact of floods on the banking sector, (ii) taking stock of financial and climate data availability and identifying data gaps, (iii) setting up collaboration and data sharing mechanisms, taking into account legal obligations and confidentiality constraints, between multiple agencies. The mission identified the main climate and financial data sources and existing data gaps, proposing a preferred micro approach for climate risk assessment based on high-granularity data and two alternative options relying on more aggregate data. The micro approach is a borrower-level assessment based on geo-located bank exposure data; the alternatives rely on lower granularity or country-level exposures, possibly resulting in estimates that might be of lower precision and output of lower quality. The choice of framework should aim to strike the right balance between timeliness and quality of the analysis.
International Monetary Fund
The global economy is at another highly uncertain moment: tentative signs of stabilization earlier this year have receded, and the outlook is increasingly risky and uncertain. At the same time, divisions within and across countries are deepening, exacerbated by rising fragmentation. Strong policy action is needed together with pragmatic approaches to find areas of common ground to respond to shared challenges. The IMF is proactively engaging with our members to chart a clear course to a stronger and more sustainable path for the global economy.
Purva Khera
,
Miss Stephanie Y Ng
,
Ms. Sumiko Ogawa
, and
Ms. Ratna Sahay
Adoption of technology in the financial services industry (i.e. fintech) has been accelerating in recent years. To systematically and comprehensively assess the extent and progress over time in financial inclusion enabled by technology, we develop a novel digital financial inclusion index. This index is based on payments data covering 52 developing countries for 2014 and 2017, taking into account both access and usage dimentions of digital financial services (DFSs). This index is then combined with the traditional measures of financial inclusion in the literature and aggregated into an overall index of financial inlusion. There are two key findings: first, the adoption of fintech has been a key driver of financial inclusion. Second, there is wide variation across countries and regions, with the greatest progress recorded in Africa and Asia and the Pacific regions. This index should offer a useful analytical tool for researchers and policy makers.
Marco A Espinosa-Vega
,
Ms. Kazuko Shirono
,
Mr. Hector Carcel Villanova
,
Ms. Bidisha Das
, and
Ms. Yingjie Fan
This departmental paper marks the 10th anniversary of the IMF Financial Access Survey (FAS). It offers a retrospective of the FAS database, along with some reflections as to its future directions. Since its 2009 launch, the FAS has provided granular data on access to and use of financial services. It is a supply-side database with annual global coverage based on data sourced directly from financial service providers—aimed at supporting policymakers to target and evaluate financial inclusion policies. Its data collection has kept pace with financial innovation, such as the rise of mobile money and growing demand for gender-disaggregated data—and the FAS must continue to evolve.
Mr. Geoffrey J Bannister
,
Mr. Jarkko Turunen
, and
Malin Gardberg
Despite significant strides in financial development over the past decades, financial dollarization, as reflected in elevated shares of foreign currency deposits and credit in the banking system, remains common in developing economies. We study the impact of financial dollarization, differentiating across foreign currency deposits and credit on financial depth, access and efficiency for a large sample of emerging market and developing countries over the past two decades. Panel regressions estimated using system GMM show that deposit dollarization has a negative impact on financial deepening on average. This negative impact is dampened in cases with past periods of high inflation. There is also some evidence that dollarization hampers financial efficiency. The results suggest that policy efforts to reduce dollarization can spur faster and safer financial development.
International Monetary Fund. Asia and Pacific Dept
This 2017 Article IV Consultation highlights steady monetary policy management and fiscal discipline in Bangladesh, which have supported macroeconomic stability, allowing the economy to benefit from favorable external demand, high remittances, and low commodity prices. The result has been strong output growth, falling inflation, moderate public debt, and a rebuilding of external resilience. In fiscal year 2017, output growth is expected to remain close to 7 percent. Over the medium term, maintaining output growth of about 7 percent a year would require increased public and private investment, as well as reforms to support capital market development and improved investment efficiency.
Mr. Alfred Schipke

Abstract

With a combined population of more than 350 million people, frontier and developing Asia, which includes countries such as Vietnam, Cambodia, and Bangladesh, is located in the world’s fastest-growing region and has favorable demographics. The countries share a number of common macroeconomic, financial, and structural challenges. This book addresses issues related to economic growth and structural transformation, as well as the risk of a poverty trap and rising income inequality.

International Monetary Fund
In 2009, the Boards of the IMF and World Bank jointly endorsed a capacity building program to help developing countries strengthen their public debt management frameworks. A key aspect of the program was to help developing countries implement the framework developed by staffs to formulate an effective medium-term debt management strategy (MTDS). The Boards also supported the continued use of the complementary framework—the Debt Management Performance Assessment (DeMPA)—developed in 2007, to assess the effectiveness of the broader institutional arrangements for public debt management. This paper provides an update on the implementation of the program since its endorsement in 2009.
Mr. Steven A Barnett
and
Mr. Rodolfo Maino
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.