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Middle East and Central Asia > Mauritania, Islamic Republic of

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Cover High-Level Summary Technical Assistance Reports
Islamic Republic of Mauritania: Customs diagnostic and needs assessment mission
Robert Kokoli
,
Mourad Arfaoui
, and
Genc Celi
The Ministry of Finance has developed the Public Finance Reform Master Plan 2021-2025 (SD-RFP 2021-2025), which aims to set strategic orientations for reforms and operational guidelines for their implementation over a five-year period. The masterplan includes objectives for the General Directorate of Customs (GDC) reform, focusing on revising customs law, enhancing revenue collection, and combating fraud.
Keywords:
Customs function; Customs automation; Customs procedures; Strategic management; Enforcement; Customs diagnostic; Needs assessment mission; customs law; post-clearance audit; Trade liberalization; Trade agreements; Post-clearance customs audit
Cover Technical Notes and Manuals
Revenue Administration: Short-Term Measures to Increase Customs Revenue in Low-Income and Fragile Countries
Mr. Gilles Montagnat-Rentier
This note discusses administrative measures that can be implemented by customs administrations of low-income and fragile countries in a short period (about a year) to improve traders’ compliance and improve revenue collection. These suggested actions have been identified based on the experience acquired through the International Monetary Fund’s (IMF) Fiscal Affairs Department’s (FAD) technical assistance (TA), particularly the findings and recommendations of TA missions to sub-Saharan African countries. Strengthening low-capacity customs administrations requires structural reforms to support the effective implementation of defined strategies. Developing core operational functions such as risk management, audit, investigation and intelligence are good examples of such reforms. Modernizing human resource management policies or achieving a fully automated environment in a customs administration are longer-term reform projects. Long-term reforms are not addressed here. The note focuses on targeted actions with a potential to increase trade revenue in the short term, and which can be taken without mobilizing large resources or engaging in a broad reorganization. It is hoped that the suggestions in this note will help stakeholders, including country authorities, customs management, donors and TA partners, area departments of the IMF, FAD, and the IMF regional TA centers, identify, design, and implement short-term changes in customs administrations. If implemented effectively, these changes should contribute to a noticeable improvement of revenue performance.
Keywords:
TNM; customs administration; IT system; customs transit procedure; clearance office; customs declarant; customs territory; Revenue; Compliance; Taxes on International Trade; Low-Income Countries; Fragile Countries; customs declaration; customs duty; customs personnel; customs agency; customs authority; customs IT strategy; customs regulation; Customs administration core functions; Duties; Imports; Customs procedures; Valuation; origin and classification; Sub-Saharan Africa; East Africa; Global; Caribbean
Cover Departmental Papers
Economic Integration in the Maghreb: An Untapped Source of Growth
Mr. Alexei P Kireyev
,
Mr. Boaz Nandwa
,
Ms. Lorraine Ocampos
,
Mr. Babacar Sarr
,
Mr. Ramzy Al Amine
,
Mr. Allan G Auclair
,
Mr. Yufei Cai
, and
Mr. Jean-Francois Dauphin
Individual countries of the Maghreb have achieved substantial progress on trade, but, as a region they remain the least integrated in the world. The share of intraregional trade is less than 5 percent of their total trade, substantially lower than in all other regional trading blocs around the world. Geopolitical considerations and restrictive economic policies have stifled regional integration. Economic policies have been guided by country-level considerations, with little attention to the region, and are not coordinated. Restrictions on trade and capital flows remain substantial and constrain regional integration for the private sector.
Keywords:
DPPP; DP; Maghreb country; Maghreb trade; export structure; factory Maghreb; growth potential; integration arrangement; private sector; Maghreb integration; trade policy; Exports; Regional integration; Comparative advantage; Trade integration; Trade policy; Maghreb; Global; Europe; Sub-Saharan Africa; Africa
Cover IMF Working Papers
Gender Equality and Economic Diversification
Romina Kazandjian
,
Ms. Lisa L Kolovich
,
Ms. Kalpana Kochhar
, and
Ms. Monique Newiak
We show that gender inequality decreases the variety of goods countries produce and export, in particular in low-income and developing countries. We argue that this happens through at least two channels: first, gender gaps in opportunity, such as lower educational enrollment rates for girls than for boys, harm diversification by constraining the potential pool of human capital available in an economy. Second, gender gaps in the labor market impede the development of new ideas by decreasing the efficiency of the labor force. Our empirical estimates support these hypotheses, providing evidence that gender-friendly policies could help countries diversify their economies.
Keywords:
WP; output diversification; Gender inequality; female labor force participation; economic diversification; economic growth; human capital; low-income and developing countries; export diversification; export product diversification; Theil index; globalization Index; Export diversification; Gender diversity; Women
Cover IMF Working Papers
Optimal Reserves in Financially Closed Economies
Mr. Olivier D Jeanne
and
Mr. Damiano Sandri
Financially closed economies insure themselves against current-account shocks using international reserves. We characterize the optimal management of reserves using an open-economy model of precautionary savings and emphasize several results. First, the welfare-based opportunity cost of reserves differs from the measures often used by practitioners. Second, under plausible calibrations the model is consistent with the rule of thumb that reserves should be close to three months of imports. Third, simple linear rules can capture most of the welfare gains from optimal reserve management. Fourth, policymakers should place more emphasis on how to use reserves in response to shocks than on the reserve target itself.
Keywords:
WP; interest rate; opportunity cost; open economy; Official reserves; current account; precautionary savings; carry cost; cost-benefit approach; real rate of interest; welfare cost; level of reserve; Reserve positions; Imports; Reserves management; Exports; Income; Global
Cover IMF Staff Country Reports
Islamic Republic of Mauritania: Sixth Review Under the Three Year Extended Credit Facility Arrangement and Request of Nonobservance of Performance Criterion—Staff Report; Press Release on the Executive Board Discussion; and Statement by the Executive Director for Islamic Republic of Mauritania
International Monetary Fund. Middle East and Central Asia Dept.
This paper discusses the Islamic Republic of Mauritania’s Sixth Review under the Three-Year Extended Credit Facility Arrangement and Request of Nonobservance of Performance Criterion. Mauritania’s current account deficit has been significantly widened due to higher infrastructure and mining-related imports. Planned projects are concentrated in agriculture, energy, and infrastructure—all three sectors with large investment needs and in line with Poverty Reduction Strategy Paper priorities. Nonrenewable resources are playing an important role in the economy, but the fiscal policy formulation does not incorporate the challenges associated with resource revenue exhaustibility and volatility and, therefore, does not prevent pro-cyclical fiscal policy.
Keywords:
ISCR; CR; executive board discussion; government; deficit; GDP; FDI; monetary policy effectiveness; fiscal policy formulation; challenges Mauritania; year-end inflation; Mining sector; Credit; Imports; Global; Sub-Saharan Africa; Europe
Cover IMF Working Papers
Measuring and Mending Monetary Policy Effectiveness Under Capital Account Restrictions: Lessons from Mauritania
Mr. Robert Blotevogel
I propose a new approach to identifying exogenous monetary policy shocks in low-income countries with capital account restrictions. In the case of Mauritania, a domestic repatriation requirement is the key institutional characteristic that allows me to establish exogeneity. Unlike in advanced countries, I find no evidence for a statistically significant impact of exogenous monetary policy shocks on bank lending. Using a unique bank-level dataset on monthly balance sheets of six Mauritanian banks over the period 2006–11, I estimate structural vector autoregressions and two-stage least square panel models to demonstrate the ineffectiveness of monetary policy. Finally, I discuss how a reduction in banks’ loan concentration ratios and improvements in the liquidity management framework could make monetary stimuli more effective.
Keywords:
WP; bank lending; central bank; bank reserves; refinancing possibility; monetary policy effectiveness; exogenous monetary policy shocks; capital account restrictions; low-income countries; liquidity management; loan concentration; monetary policy shock; fish export; balance sheet equity; liquidity position; private-sector credit; transmission mechanism; banks' holding; loan portfolio; excess reserves; risk management capability; Credit; Bank credit; Agroindustries; Exports; Loans; Global
Cover IMF Working Papers
Trade Flows, Multilateral Resistance, and Firm Heterogeneity
Mr. Alberto Behar
and
Benjamin D. Nelson
We present a gravity model that accounts for multilateral resistance, firm heterogeneity and country-selection into trade, while accommodating asymmetries in trade flows. A new equation for the proportion of exporting firms takes a gravity form, such that the extensive margin is also affected by multilateral resistance. We develop Taylor approximated multilateral resistance terms with which to capture the comparative static effects of changes in trade costs. For isolated bilateral changes in trade frictions, multilateral resistance effects are small for most countries. However, if all countries reduce their trade frictions, the impact of multilateral resistance is so strong that bilateral trade falls in most cases, despite the larger trade elasticities implied by firm heterogeneity. As a consequence, the world-wide trade response, though positive, is much lower.
Keywords:
WP; trade cost; Gravity models; multilateral resistance; firm heterogeneity; trade elasticity; trade flow; World trade resistance; trade response; trade elasticities net; trade friction; Plurilateral trade; Trade balance; Exports; Multilateral trade; Imports; Global; Country-pair GDP share
Cover IMF Staff Country Reports
Islamic Republic of Mauritania: Selected Issues Paper
International Monetary Fund
Despite a relatively high GDP growth rate over the past decade (2000–10), economic growth in Mauritania has not been able to make a significant dent in poverty. Rapid and sustained poverty reduction requires inclusive growth that allows people to contribute to and benefit from expanding economic activity. Mauritania needs to make greater progress toward inclusive growth by enhancing the distributional impact of public spending and by improving the quality of pro-poor spending. The Executive Board recommends effective monetary policies to meet the challenges.
Keywords:
ISCR; CR; Mauritania; bank; poverty incidence; bank lending channel; poverty perception; public spending; subsidy reform; funding constraint; Inclusive growth; Credit; Bank credit; Exports; Europe; Global; Sub-Saharan Africa; Middle East; North Africa; East Africa
Cover IMF Working Papers
External Debt Sustainability in HIPC Completion Point Countries
Ms. Yan M Sun
This paper examines a number of structural factors affecting the external debt sustainability of HIPC completion point countries. It shows that (i) while comparing favorably with other lowincome countries, the policy and institutional frameworks of completion point countries in general are still relatively weak, and their debt management practices remain inferior to international standards; and (ii) their export base remains narrow and fiscal revenue mobilization lags behind, even compared with many other low-income countries. Achieving and maintaining long-term debt sustainability in completion point countries will require continued structural reforms, timely donor support, and close monitoring of new borrowing in support of sound macroeconomic policies.
Keywords:
WP; HIPC Completion Point Countries; debt management; export; HIPCs; debt; External debt sustainability; HIPC; PRGF country; debt management capacity; point country; HIPC country; country paper; export diversification; Government debt management; Debt sustainability; Institutional arrangements for revenue administration; Revenue mobilization; Exports; Global