Business and Economics > Industries: Food

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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.
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.
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.