Asia and Pacific > India
Abstract
Les pays à faible revenu continuent d'éprouver des difficultés considérables à satisfaire leurs importants besoins en développement tout en préservant la viabilité de leur dette, même après avoir bénéficié d'un important allégement de la dette pour nombre d'entre eux. Ces difficultés sont encore exacerbées par l'évolution du paysage financier, dont l'émergence de nouveaux créanciers et investisseurs, le recours à des instruments de financement complexes, et le développement des marchés intérieurs. Le cadre de viabilité de la dette, élaboré conjointement par la Banque mondiale et le FMI, est très utile pour aider à résoudre ces difficultés ainsi qu'à réduire les risques de réapparition d'épisodes de surendettement. Ce document présente les fondements théoriques du cadre et explique comment en tirer tout le parti.
Abstract
Low-income countries continue to face significant challenges in meeting their vast development needs while maintaining a sustainable debt position, even after many of these countries have benefited from substantial debt relief. These challenges are further exacerbated by changes in the financial landscape, including the emergence of new creditors and investors, the use of more complex financing vehicles, and the development of domestic markets. The joint World Bank/IMF debt sustainability framework is well placed to help address these challenges and reduce the risks of renewed episodes of debt distress. This paper explains the analytical underpinnings of the framework and the means to ensure its full effectiveness.
Abstract
This study provides a candid, systematic, and critical review of recent evidence on this complex subject. Based on a review of the literature and some new empirical evidence, it finds that (1) in spite of an apparently strong theoretical presumption, it is difficult to detect a strong and robust causal relationship between financial integration and economic growth; (2) contrary to theoretical predictions, financial integration appears to be associated with increases in consumption volatility (both in absolute terms and relative to income volatility) in many developing countries; and (3) there appear to be threshold effects in both of these relationships, which may be related to absorptive capacity. Some recent evidence suggests that sound macroeconomic frameworks and, in particular, good governance are both quantitatively and qualitatively important in affecting developing countries’ experiences with financial globalization.
Abstract
Since the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001, there has been increased public interest in informal funds transfer (IFT) systems. This paper examines the informal hawala system, an IFT system found predominantly in the Middle East and South Asia. The paper examines the historical and socioeconomic context within which the hawala has evolved, the operational features that make it susceptible to potential financial abuse, the fiscal and monetary implications for hawala-remitting and hawala-recipient countries, and current regulatory and supervisory responses.
Abstract
The financial turmoil of the late 1990s prompted a broad search for tools and techniques for detecting and preventing financial crises, and more recent episodes of instability have high lighted the importance of continuous monitoring of financial systems as a tool for preventing crises. This paper looks at the development of measures of financial sector soundness and of methods to analyze them. The authors propose two sets of financial soundness indicators that are considered useful for periodic monitoring, and for compilation and dissemination efforts by national authorities. They highlight the substantial advance made in recent years in measuring and analyzing financial soundness indicators, and specify areas where more work is needed.
Abstract
This paper explores the Indian adjustment program of 1991/92 and its initial results. The contents include long-term growth trends for output, investment, and macroeconomic condition; education, labor employment, and poverty; growth, accumulation, and productivity; results of India-specific studies; the stabilization and adjustment strategy; the response to the reforms; the impact on unemployment and poverty; the behavior of private investment; fiscal adjustment and reform; recent experience with a surge in capital inflows: overall trends, the investor base, comparison with other countries, and factors behind the flows; the impact on the economy; the sustainability of capital flows; and structural reforms and the implications for investment and growth; trade reform; the investment regime; public enterprise reform; and financial market reform.
Abstract
This chapter discusses the changes that have taken place in the underlying structural relationships determining government expenditures between 1975 and 1986. The paper describes the methodological problems in analyzing the determinants of government expenditure patterns, and the issues involved in making cross-country expenditure comparisons, and the problems confronting country economists in assessing a country's expenditure profile. The Tait-Heller study concluded that the international expenditure comparison (IEC) framework provided a “starting point” for analysis. In many respects, this conclusion would still appear valid; if anything, the issues associated with using the IEC indices have become more rather than less complex. Data limitations also pose a limiting factor on the usefulness of an analysis of the IEC indices of a country, and even more strongly suggest its use only as complementary to more detailed sectoral and economic analyses of expenditure profiles. The results for the developing countries in the European region are almost identical to those observed in Africa, with the key exception being an increased priority for expenditure on social security and welfare and a decline in the priority attached to education.
Abstract
This is the third in a group of three papers dealing with various aspects of Fund-supported adjustment programs.
Abstract
Since the early 1970s foreign direct and portfolio equity investment flows into developing countries, although continuing to increase in absolute terms, have been relatively less important than in previous years, as foreign private capital flows have been dominated by debt-creating bank credit.
Abstract
One of the more important yet puzzling aspects of the recent global stagflation has been the rather surprising resiliency of growth rates of real income in non-oil developing countries during the 1973-80 period in the face of the marked slowdown of corresponding growth rates in the industrial world. The primary purpose of this paper is to shed some light on this phenomenon by examining the relationship between the rate of economic growth in the non-oil developing countries and that in the industrial countries over the past decade or so.