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Western Hemisphere > Dominica

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Cover IMF Staff Country Reports
Eastern Caribbean Currency Union: Selected Issues
International Monetary Fund. Western Hemisphere Dept.
This Selected Issues paper on the Eastern Caribbean Currency Union (ECCU) focuses on efficient, sustainable, and fair pension schemes. Despite recent reform efforts, the financial sustainability of the ECCU’s defined benefit social security schemes remains under strain, largely reflecting the still relatively low contributions and generous payouts. This, coupled with a rapidly ageing population and high labor market informality, increases the need for a comprehensive review and adoption of further parametric and non-parametric reforms of the pension systems to avoid abrupt and more sizable adjustments in the future as well as to reduce the risks of old-age poverty. This annex reviews pension schemes in the ECCU, with a focus on assessing their design and performance and identifying policy options to improve their efficiency, fairness, and sustainability. Key recommendations include swift adoption of further comprehensive reforms to address design weaknesses, improving coverage, investment strategy, administrative efficiency, and transparency, and establishing automatic adjustment mechanisms.
Keywords:
NIS pension schemes Overview; labor market performance; public sector pension schemes; labor markets in the ECCU; ECCU migration; Pensions; Pension spending; Aging; Retirement; Labor markets; Caribbean; Global
Cover IMF Working Papers
Universal Health Care 101: Lessons for the Eastern Caribbean and Beyond
Ms. Evridiki Tsounta
Despite the increasing interest in universal health care, little is known about the optimal way to finance, design, and implement it. This paper attempts to fill this gap by providing some general policy recommendations on this important issue. While most of the paper addresses the Eastern Caribbean Currency Union (ECCU) countries, its policy implications are applicable to any country. The paper finds that the best financing option is country-specific depending on a country’s economic, cultural, institutional, demographic and epidemiological characteristics, as well as political economy considerations. However, taxation should be the primary financing source. It also concludes that an appropriate and realistic benefit package would need to be designed to ensure the system’s financial viability. Regarding the optimal way to implement universal health care, certain preconditions are needed, including sound public administration, a small informal economy, and a transparent health financing system that builds social consensus.
Keywords:
WP; health cost; health system; government Health spending; health financing goal; country authorities; Health economics; government expenditure; financing system; health financing; ECCU country; ECCU health system; health card; health outcome; health system attainment; health affair; health system performance; Health care spending; Health care; Social security contributions; Aging; Caribbean
Cover IMF Staff Country Reports
Eastern Caribbean Currency Union: Selected Issues
International Monetary Fund
This Selected Issues paper analyzes the competitive threats to the tourism sector in the Eastern Caribbean Currency Union (ECCU). The paper concludes that the ECCU countries have lost competitiveness globally and vis-à-vis newly emergent Caribbean tourist destinations as a result of both price and nonprice factors. The short-term measures implemented by the countries seem to have been insufficient to prevent further declines in 2002. The paper also describes strengthening fiscal discipline through fiscal benchmarks.
Keywords:
ISCR; CR; OECS country; ECCU country; government; bank; CARICOM country; ECCU member; ECCB benchmark; Pensions; Tourism; Pension spending; Commercial banks; Caribbean; West Africa; Global; South Asia