Business and Economics > Industries: Food

You are looking at 1 - 10 of 19 items

International Monetary Fund. Monetary and Capital Markets Department
At the request of the National Bank of Rwanda (NBR), a technical assistance (TA) mission from the Monetary and Capital Markets (MCM) department was conducted from October 9 to 18, 2023, to enhance the NBR’s Forecasting and Policy Analysis System (FPAS). The mission aimed to strengthen the understanding and application of nowcasting frameworks for Gross Domestic Product (GDP) and Consumer Price Index (CPI) inflation, as well as to analyze the effects of weather shocks on food crop production and fresh food prices. The mission included interactive technical sessions with NBR staff and achieved the following: (1) Improved forecast evaluation by resolving discrepancies in the use of different Core CPI definitions in the medium-term Quarterly Projection Model (QPM) and nowcasting models; (2) Established a system for analyzing the impact of weather shocks, particularly rainfall, on food crop production and fresh food prices; (3) Provided hands-on training for NBR staff on using CPI nowcasting tools to monitor monthly inflation outcomes and creating and interpreting uncertainty fan charts for GDP and CPI projections; and (4) Enhanced understanding of the construction of high-frequency real sector indicators in GDP nowcasting models.
Kalin I Tintchev
and
Laura Jaramillo
Using a comprehensive drought measure and a panel autoregressive distributed lag model, the paper finds that worsening drought conditions can result in long-term scarring of real GDP per capita growth and affect long-term price stability in Fragile and Conflict-Affected States (FCS), more so than in other countries, leaving them further behind. Lower crop productivity and slower investment are key channels through which drought impacts economic growth in FCS. In a high emissions scenario, drought conditions will cut 0.4 percentage points of FCS’ growth of real GDP per capita every year over the next 40 years and increase average inflation by 2 percentage points. Drought will also increase hunger in FCS, from alreay high levels. The confluence of lower food production and higher prices in a high emissions scenario would push 50 million more people in FCS into hunger. The macroeconomic effects of drought in FCS countries are amplified by their low copying capacity due to high public debt, low social spending, insufficient trade openness, high water insecurity, and weak governance.
Mr. Bjoern Rother
,
Mr. Sebastian Sosa
,
Majdi Debbich
,
Chiara Castrovillari
, and
Ervin Prifti
The global food crisis remains a major challenge. Food insecurity fueled by widely experienced increases in the cost of living has become a growing concern especially in low-income countries, even if price pressures on global food markets have softened somewhat since the onset of Russia’s war in Ukraine in February 2022. Targeted assistance to the most vulnerable households combined with policy measures to support trade and agriculture systems, including to better cope with climate shocks, can help countries withstand the fallout of the ongoing food crisis while building longer-term resilience. The IMF, working in close cooperation with other international organizations, has continued to contribute to international efforts to alleviate food insecurity by providing policy advice, capacity development, and financial support through Upper Credit Tranche Arrangements and the new Food Shock Window. New commitments to countries particularly affected by the global food crisis total $13.2 billion since February 2022, of which $3.7 billion has been disbursed as of March 2023.
Mr. Olumuyiwa S Adedeji
,
Mrs. Jana Bricco
, and
Ms. Vera V Kehayova
The exposure of low-income countries to natural disasters has a significant impact on food production and food security. This paper provides a framework for assessing a country’s vulnerability to food crisis in the event of natural disasters. The paper finds that macroeconomic and structural indicators that are crucial for ensuring the resilience of low-income countries to adverse external shocks are equally important for minimizing the occurrence of food crisis in the event of natural disasters.
International Monetary Fund. External Relations Dept.

The IMF is helping low-income countries hit by high food prices take appropriate policy action while providing financial assistance to some of the worst-affected nations, Managing Director Dominique Strauss-Kahn said.

International Monetary Fund

This Selected Issues paper on Bangladesh underlies the export performance of readymade garment industry and inflation dynamics. Bangladesh has demonstrated that it is highly competitive in the world’s major garment markets. Inflation inertia, monetary factors, and exchange rate fluctuations are the main determinants of inflation in Bangladesh. Despite adoption of numerous tax policy measures during the past few years, policies implemented by the Bangladesh authorities have not been fully successful in lifting the revenue ratio to a level warranted by developmental objectives.

JOHN NASH
and
Donald Mitchell

This paper highlights that the current round of trade talks under the auspices of the World Trade Organization aims at better integrating developing countries—especially the small and poor ones—into the global trading system. For that reason, it was named the Doha Development Agenda when it was launched in late 2001. However, more than three years on, little progress has been made. It took a late July 2004 accord outlining “negotiating frameworks” in agriculture and industrial products just to keep the talks afloat.

International Monetary Fund. External Relations Dept.

Global food aid serves as a critical safety net for poor countries. But does food aid reach those who most need it when they most need it? And, more broadly, has it generally been effective in “smoothing” consumption patterns—that is, averting sharp changes in the overall availability offood? In a new IMF Working Paper, “Foreign Aid and Consumption Smoothing: Evidence from Global Food Aid,” Sanjeev Gupta, Benedict Clements, and Erwin R. Tiongson examine the cyclical properties offood aid and evaluate how successful it has been in helping the economies it targets.

Mr. Erwin H Tiongson
,
Mr. Benedict J. Clements
, and
Mr. Sanjeev Gupta
Global food aid is considered a critical consumption smoothing mechanism in many countries. However, its record of stabilizing consumption has been mixed. This paper examines the cyclical properties of food aid with respect to food availability in recipient countries, with a view to assessing its impact on consumption in some 150 developing countries and transition economies, covering 1970 to 2000. The results show that global food aid has been allocated to countries most in need. Food aid has also been countercyclical within countries with the greatest need. However, for most countries, food aid is not countercyclical. The amount of food aid provided is also insufficient to mitigate contemporaneous shortfalls in consumption. The results are robust to various specifications and filtering techniques and have important implications for macroeconomic and fiscal management.