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International Monetary Fund. Western Hemisphere Dept.
This paper presents Suriname’s Sixth Review under the Extended Arrangement under the Extended Fund Facility. The authorities’ strong policy and efforts to stabilize the economy are yielding positive results: the economy is growing, inflation is on a steady downward trend, and investor confidence is returning. Suriname is implementing an ambitious economic reform agenda aimed at restoring fiscal and debt sustainability through fiscal consolidation and debt restructuring, protecting the vulnerable by expanding social protection, upgrading the monetary and exchange rate policy framework, addressing banking sector vulnerabilities, and advancing the anti-corruption and governance agenda. Monetary policy is supporting disinflation. The authorities’ demonstrated commitment to flexible, market-determined exchange rate is supporting international reserves accumulation. Finalization of the central bank recapitalization plan will help further strengthen its operational independence and financial autonomy. Building on the progress made thus far under the program, continued efforts are needed to entrench fiscal discipline, while protecting the poor and vulnerable, and further strengthen institutions and address governance weaknesses.
International Monetary Fund. Monetary and Capital Markets Department
This Technical Assistance Report on Suriname discusses summary and recommendations of financial stability report (FSR). The mission focused on enhancing the FSR of the Central Bank of Suriname (CBS) whose publication has recently resumed. The mission provided several recommendations to the CBS. This covered the content and structure of the FSR and its related FSR processes, CBS’s internal and external communication, additional headcount for the Financial Stability Department, developing the financial stability analytical toolkit, coverage of the non-banking sector, and the use of data sources and statistics. The preparation of a detailed FSR production plan is critical and could facilitate improvements and bring some synergies between different teams involved in its production. This needs to include different steps and set up a firm date of publication. The CBS should further continue working toward enhancing the financial stability analytical toolkit. The mission also identified that more in-depth analysis of the insurance and pension sector is needed. The bank-like activities undertaken by non-banks should be fully assessed and monitored.
Goohoon Kwon
and
Mr. Raphael A Espinoza
This paper assesses the extent of regional financial integration in the Caribbean Community (CARICOM) by analyzing equity prices in the region and rigidity of external financing constraints. The results are presented in a cross-regional perspective. The Caribbean stock markets are not as well integrated as one would expect from the extent of cross-listing and importance of regional banking groups: price differentials of cross-listed stocks reach an average of 5 percent. Auto-Regressive models suggest that these price differentials are only slowly arbitraged away, with half-lives exceeding 7 worked days, even when looking only at large arbitrage opportunities (using a Threshold Auto-Regressive model). A speculative methodology using macroeconomic data seems to confirm these findings. A strong mean reversion of the current account (respectively regional trade imbalances) is interpreted, following Obstfeld and Taylor (2004), as a lack of ways to finance current account deficits, i.e. a lack of global (respectively regional) financial integration. The region appears to be much less integrated than the EU15 or the ASEAN+3 groups, although it fares well compared to other LDCs.