Western Hemisphere > Dominica

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International Monetary Fund. Western Hemisphere Dept.
The 2024 Article IV Consultation with member countries on common policies of the Eastern Caribbean Currency Union (ECCU) discusses that the economies have registered a strong recovery after successive external shocks. Fiscal and external balances have improved, but public debt and current account deficits remain high. The financial system has been stable and liquid, although it continues to be confronted with asset quality weaknesses and rising risks in the non-bank financial sector. Longstanding structural challenges affecting private investment and employment create a drag on growth going forward. The regional priority is to rebuild buffers while protecting the fiscal space for priority public investment and social spending. Social policies and institutional labor market reforms would help improve competitiveness by addressing structural constraints to employment and labor productivity. Concerted efforts to address gaps in core economic data improve transparency and strengthen resource capacity for data collection would support calibration of economic policies.
Emilio Fernández Corugedo
,
Andres Gonzalez
, and
Mr. Alejandro D Guerson
This paper presents a Markov switching dynamic stochastic general equilibrium model designed to evaluate the macroeconomic return of adaptation investment to natural disasters (NDs) and the impact of climate change. While the model follows the existing literature in assuming that NDs destroy a share of the public and private capital stocks and a government that can invest in adaptation at an additional cost, it adds several features that are key to the analysis, both in the near (transition) and long (steady state) terms. Those include incomplete markets, financial frictions with collateral constraints, foreign remittances, full menu of tax and government spending instruments, and endogenous climate risk premium. The model is calibrated to the case of Dominica. It finds that NDs have large and persistent negative effects on output and public finances. It also shows that adaptation investment has large returns in terms of private investment, employment, output and tax revenue in the long term, especially under climate change.
International Monetary Fund. Western Hemisphere Dept.
This Selected Issues paper reviews anecdotal evidence on labor market conditions and discusses policy options to strengthen the labor market and support growth in St. Kitts and Nevis. The diagnosis of labor market conditions reveals challenges and opportunities in wages, productivity, and labor allocation across sectors. These include strengthening jobs and growth opportunities across sectors, enhancing the wage setting system to support competitiveness, and increasing the efficiency of the public sector. Strong institutions are needed to effectively manage public sector wages over the medium term. Several institutional arrangements can facilitate this goal including regular comparison between public and private sector wages, regular wage negotiations as opposed to ad hoc adjustments, and using medium-term wage bill forecasting to support better fiscal outcomes. Labor market and growth policies could play a key role in strengthening jobs and growth in the post-coronavirus disease era, including by leveraging sectoral linkages to provide more diversified and higher quality job opportunities, enhancing labor market policies, and increasing the efficiency of the public sector.
Mr. Serhan Cevik
Global warming is the most significant threat to ecosystems and people’s health and living standards, especially in small island states in the Caribbean and elsewhere. This paper contributes to the debate by analyzing different options to scale up climate change mitigation and adaptation. In particular, the empirical analysis indicates that increasing energy efficiency and reducing the use of fossil fuel in electricity generation could lead to a significant reduction in carbon emissions, while investing in physical and financial resilience would yield long-run benefits. From a risk-reward perspective, the advantages of reducing the risks associated with climate change and the health benefits from higher environmental quality clearly outweigh the potential cost of climate change mitigation and adaptation in the short run. The additional revenue generated by environmental taxes could be used to compensate the most vulnerable households, building a multilayered safety net, and strengthening structural resilience.
International Monetary Fund. Western Hemisphere Dept.
This 2022 Article IV Consultation highlights that with Eastern Caribbean Currency Union economies slowly emerging from the pandemic with scars, the impact of the war in Ukraine is a setback to the nascent recovery. Higher food and energy prices, amid ongoing supply disruptions and intra-regional transportation bottlenecks, are raising inflation, eroding income, lowering output growth, worsening fiscal and external positions, and threatening food and energy security. The financial system has remained broadly stable so far, with adequate capital and liquidity buffers, but nonperforming loans remain high and could rise further following the expiration of the Eastern Caribbean Central Bank’s loan moratoria program. The outlook is subject to large downside risks, primarily from further increases in commodity prices and new coronavirus disease variants amid vaccine hesitancy, in addition to the ever-present threat of natural disasters. The report recommends that maintaining fiscal prudence while protecting the vulnerable through health spending and temporary targeted transfers and enhanced social safety nets to cope with rising living costs. Adopting well-designed rule-based fiscal frameworks would help achieve fiscal consolidation, enhance resilience to shocks such as natural disasters, and preserve the credibility of the regional debt target.
International Monetary Fund. Western Hemisphere Dept.
Dominica is among the countries most vulnerable to natural disasters and climate change. During 1997-2017, it was the country with highest GDP losses to climate-related natural disasters and ranked in the top 10 percent among 182 countries for climate-related fatalities. Following a huge devastation, owing to back-to-back major storms in 2015 and 2017, Dominica announced its intention to become the first disaster resilient nation. In 2019, it was agreed with the government that the Fund, in consultation and collaboration with other development partners, would provide support for preparing a Disaster Resilience Strategy (DRS), a comprehensive plan including policies, cost, and financing to build resilience against natural disasters.
International Monetary Fund. Strategy, Policy, &amp
,
Review Department
,
International Monetary Fund. Western Hemisphere Dept.
, and
International Monetary Fund. Asia and Pacific Dept
This paper discusses how countries vulnerable to natural disasters can reduce the associated human and economic cost. Building on earlier work by IMF staff, the paper views disaster risk management through the lens of a three-pillar strategy for building structural, financial, and post-disaster (including social) resilience. A coherent disaster resilience strategy, based on a diagnostic of risks and cost-effective responses, can provide a road map for how to tackle disaster related vulnerabilities. It can also help mobilize much-needed support from the international community.
International Monetary Fund
Small developing states are disproportionately vulnerable to natural disasters. On average, the annual cost of disasters for small states is nearly 2 percent of GDP—more than four times that for larger countries. This reflects a higher frequency of disasters, adjusted for land area, as well as greater vulnerability to severe disasters. About 9 percent of disasters in small states involve damage of more than 30 percent of GDP, compared to less than 1 percent for larger states. Greater exposure to disasters has important macroeconomic effects on small states, resulting in lower investment, lower GDP per capita, higher poverty, and a more volatile revenue base.