Narrow Your Choices

Refine By Topic

Refine By Series

Refine By Language

Refine By Date

—

Refine By IMF Taxonomy

Refine By JEL Taxonomy

Refine by LOC Taxonomy

Refine By THEMA Taxonomy

  • Print
  • Save

Africa > Ethiopia, The Federal Democratic Republic of

You are looking at 1 - 10 of 168 items for

  • Type: Journal Issue x
Clear All Modify Search
Cover Regional Economic Outlook, Sub-Saharan Africa, October 2023
Regional Economic Outlook, Sub-Saharan Africa, October 2023
Light on the Horizon?
International Monetary Fund. African Dept.

Abstract

Still emerging from the COVID-19 pandemic, countries in sub-Saharan Africa have been hit by a sluggish global economy, worldwide inflation, high borrowing costs, and a cost-of-living crisis. In many cases, inflation is still too high, borrowing costs are still elevated, exchange-rate pressures persist, and political instability is an ongoing concern. To ensure that the coming rebound is more than just a transitory glimpse of sunshine, it is important for authorities to guard against a premature relaxation of stabilization policies, while also focusing on reforms to both claw back lost ground from the four-year crisis and also to create new space to address the region’s pressing development needs.

Keywords:
economic conditions; economic forecasting; Africa economic development; economic policy; sub-Saharan Africa; inflation expectation; inflation-depreciation spiral; funding squeeze; food price inflation; IMF financing arrangement; consumption basket; sub-Saharan Africa face; inflation fall; Inflation; Exchange rates; Food prices; Central bank policy rate; Government debt management; Global
Cover IMF Working Papers
How Persistent are Climate-Related Price Shocks? Implications for Monetary Policy
Alain N. Kabundi, Mr. Montfort Mlachila, and Jiaxiong Yao
Climate change is likely to lead to more frequent and more severe supply and demand shocks that will present a challenge to monetary policy formulation. The main objective of the paper is to investigate how climate shocks affect consumer prices in a broad range of countries over a long period using local projection methods. It finds that the impact of climate shocks on inflation depends on the type and intensity of shocks, country income level, and monetary policy regime. Specifically, droughts tend to have the highest overall positive impact on inflation, reflecting rising food prices. Interestingly, floods tend to have a dampening impact on inflation, pointing to the predominance of demand shocks in this case. Over the long run, the dominant monetary policy paradigm of flexible inflation targeting faced with supply-induced climate shocks may become increasingly ineffective, especially in LIDCs. More research is needed to find viable alternative monetary policy frameworks.
Keywords:
climate change; monetary policy; monetary policy models; food price inflation drought; monetary policy paradigm; supply and demand shock; IMF working paper 22/207; IT country; Natural disasters; Inflation; Monetary policy frameworks; Global; Caribbean
Cover Departmental Papers
Climate Change and Chronic Food Insecurity in Sub-Saharan Africa
Diogo Miguel Salgado Baptista, Mrs. Mai Farid, Dominique Fayad, Laurent Kemoe, Loic S Lanci, Ms. Pritha Mitra, Tara S Muehlschlegel, Cedric Okou, John A Spray, Kevin Tuitoek, and Ms. Filiz D Unsal
Climate change is intensifying food insecurity across sub-Saharan Africa (SSA) with lasting adverse macroeconomic effects, especially on economic growth and poverty. Successive shocks from the war in Ukraine and COVID-19 pandemic have increased food prices and depressed incomes, raising the number of people suffering from high malnutrition and unable to meet basic food consumption needs by at least 30 percent to 123 million in 2022 or 12 percent of SSA’s population. Addressing the lack of resilience to climate change—that critically underlies food insecurity in SSA—will require careful policy prioritization against a backdrop of financing and capacity constraints. This paper presents some key considerations and examples of tradeoffs and complementarities across policies to address food insecurity. Key findings include (1) Fiscal policies focused on social assistance and efficient public infrastructure investment can improve poorer households’ access to affordable food, facilitate expansion of climate-resilient and green agricultural production, and support quicker recovery from adverse climate events; (2) Improving access to finance is key to stepping up private investment in agricultural resilience and productivity as well as improving the earning capacity and food purchasing power of poorer rural and urban households; and (3) Greater regional trade integration, complemented with resilient transport infrastructure, enables sales of one country’s bumper harvests to its neighbors’ facing shortages. The international community can help with financial assistance—especially for the above-mentioned social assistance and key infrastructure areas—capacity development, and facilitating transfers of technology and know-how.
Keywords:
Food Insecurity; Spatial Macroeconomics; Economic Development; Agricultural Policy; policy consideration; infrastructure investment; policy mix; SSA development outcome; cash transfer; IMF Library; price effect; increase dummy; fuel price hike; Climate change; Food prices; Food security; Agricultural sector; Agricultural commodities; Sub-Saharan Africa; Global; Africa; West Africa; East Africa
Cover IMF Working Papers
Staple Food Prices in Sub-Saharan Africa: An Empirical Assessment
Cedric Okou, John A Spray, and Ms. Filiz D Unsal
This paper analyzes the domestic and external drivers of local staple food prices in Sub-Saharan Africa. Using data on domestic market prices of the five most consumed staple foods from 15 countries, this paper finds that external factors drive food price inflation, but domestic factors can mitigate these vulnerabilities. On the external side, our estimations show that Sub-Saharan African countries are highly vulnerable to global food prices, with the pass-through from global to local food prices estimated close to unity for highly imported staples. On the domestic side, staple food price inflation is lower in countries with greater local production and among products with lower consumption shares. Additionally, adverse shocks such as natural disasters and wars bring 1.8 and 4 percent staple food price surges respectively beyond generalized price increases. Economic policy can lower food price inflation, as the strength of monetary policy and fiscal frameworks, the overall economic environment, and transport constraints in geographically challenged areas account for substantial cross-country differences in staple food prices.
Keywords:
Food prices; inflation; food insecurity; disasters; wars; monetary policy framework; food price inflation; price effect; food price; generalized price; SSA country group average; Consumption; Real effective exchange rates; Imports; Global; Sub-Saharan Africa; staple food; increase dummy; consumption share; food price variation
Cover IMF Working Papers
Successful Transitions from Public to Private-Sector Led Growth: Lessons for Benin
Aissatou Diallo
Many Sub-Saharan African (SSA) countries, like Benin, have scaled up public investment during the last decade. Such a strategy contributed to the improvement of infrastructure, but also to a build-up of debt vulnerabilities. Looking forward, the planned fiscal consolidation will result in some restraint of public spending, and, in particular, public investment. In this context, maintaining or even raising the region’s economic growth will require an offset by the private sector. The analysis draws lessons from countries that have successfully transitioned from public investment to private investment-led growth using a global sample starting in the mid-1980s. These lessons highlight policies that have been crucial in fostering a rebound of private investment in the wake of a contraction of public investment. The analytical framework proposed by Hausman, Rodrik and Velasco (2005) is used to identify and classify such policies. Finally, the paper analyses how the identified policies could help Benin achieving a smooth transition from public to private sector-led growth.
Keywords:
Private and public investment; growth; transition; fiscal consolidation; lessons; expansionary fiscal consolidation literature; investment-led growth; identified policy; scaling-up program; investment scaling-up; Private investment; Public investment spending; Fiscal consolidation; Infrastructure; Global; Sub-Saharan Africa
Cover Policy Papers
Key Trends in Implementing the FUND's Transparency Policy
International Monetary Fund. Strategy, Policy, & Review Department
At the time of the 2005 Review of the Fund’s Transparency Policy, the Executive Board required regular updates on trends in implementing the transparency policy. This report provides an overview of recent developments, reflecting information on documents considered by the Board in 2019 and their respective publication status up to June 2020, and updating the previous annual report on Key Trends.
Keywords:
transparency Policy; article IV; publication rate; deletion request; country policy intention document; Emerging and frontier financial markets; Monetary unions; Anti-money laundering and combating the financing of terrorism (AML/CFT); Financial Sector Assessment Program; Debt sustainability analysis; Middle East; North Africa; Central and Eastern Europe; East Africa; Western Hemisphere
Cover IMF Working Papers
Effects of COVID-19 on Regional and Gender Equality in Sub-Saharan Africa: Evidence from Nigeria and Ethiopia
Ms. Chie Aoyagi
The labor structure in sub-Saharan Africa is characterized by a high share of informal employment in the rural agricultural sector. The impact of COVID-19 on female employment may not appear to be large as the share of such employment is particularly high among women. Nevertheless, widespread income reduction was observed both in rural and urban households. This could worsen the opportunities for women as husbands’ control over the household resource is the norm. The paper also finds that rural children struggled to continue learning during school closures. Gender-sensitive policies are needed to narrow the gap during and post-pandemic.
Keywords:
labor structure in sub-Saharan Africa; labor market structure; gender-sensitive policy; family worker; employment loss; Women; Employment; COVID-19; Income; Sub-Saharan Africa; West Africa
Cover Policy Papers
Catastrophe Containment and Relief Trust—Third Tranche Of Debt Service Relief In The Context Of The COVID-19 Pandemic
International Monetary Fund. Finance Dept., International Monetary Fund. Strategy, Policy, &, Review Department, and International Monetary Fund. Legal Dept.
This paper proposes that the Executive Board approve the disbursement of a third tranche of CCRT debt service relief to 28 of the 29 CCRT-eligible members, covering the period April 14, 2021 through October 15, 2021, given staff’s assessment that sufficient financial resources are available.
Keywords:
CCRT debt service relief; CCRT-eligible country; debt service relief; governance safeguards commitment; tranche of debt service relief; Debt service; Debt relief; COVID-19; Global; CCRT country; CCRT debt relief; status of the CCRT
Cover Policy Papers
World Bank Group And International Monetary Fund Support For Debt Relief Under The Common Framework And Beyond
International Monetary Fund and World Bank
This paper discusses World Bank and IMF support for addressing fiscal and debt distress in IDA countries, with emphasis on strong continued concessional flows for green, resilient, and inclusive development.
Keywords:
PP; IDA country; debt treatment; WBG-IMF LIC-DSF; DSSI extension; IMF DSA; IMF UCT-quality arrangement; IMF UCT-quality program; transparency policy; development policy financing; Debt relief; Debt sustainability; Debt sustainability analysis; Multilateral development institutions; Global
Cover IMF Working Papers
Food Price Shocks and Household Consumption in Developing Countries: The Role of Fiscal Policy
Carine Meyimdjui and Jean-Louis Combes
This paper studies whether fiscal policy plays a stabilizing role in the context of import food price shocks. More precisely, the paper assesses whether fiscal policy dampens the adverse effect of import food price shocks on household consumption. Based on a panel of 70 low and middle-income countries over the period 1980-2012, the paper finds that import price shocks negatively and significantly affect household consumption, but this effect appears to be mitigated by discretionary government consumption, notably through government subsidies and transfers. The results are particularly robust for African countries and countries with less flexible exchange rate regimes.
Keywords:
Import Food Price Shocks; Fiscal Policy.; WP; government consumption expenditure; government transfer; government expenditure; government subsidy; price shock