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Africa > Malawi

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Cover IMF Notes
Agricultural Producer Subsidies: Navigating Challenges and Policy Considerations
David Amaglobeli
,
Todd Benson
, and
Tewodaj Mogues
The objectives underlying agricultural output subsidies can have conflicting implications for the design of subsidy programs. As they tend to affect meaningful swaths of the electorate, subsidies can also be an attractive political instrument. By artificially lowering production costs or assuring higher output prices, direct support measures can result in resource misallocation in instances where they fail to address market failures, such as imperfect information about the returns to fertilizers. Subsidies can also contribute to fertilizer overuse, harming the environment and the agricultural sector in the long term. Furthermore, agricultural production subsidies are often fiscally costly and unfavorable compared to alternative uses of public funds—both within the agricultural sector and outside it—to achieve the same ends. Various design and implementation challenges amplify the shortcomings of producer subsidy programs.
Keywords:
Agricultural subsidies; direct farmer support; payments to agricultural producers; producer subsidy; input subsidy program; IMF note 2024/002; output price subsidy; implementation challenge; Agricultural policy; Government subsidies; Agroindustries; Agricultural sector; Price incentives; Global; Sub-Saharan Africa
Cover Policy Papers
Guidance Note on IMF Engagement on Social Safeguards in Low-Income Countries
International Monetary Fund. Strategy, Policy, &amp
and
Review Department
This note provides operational guidance to staff on how to engage on social safeguard issues with low-income countries in both program and surveillance contexts. The note is not intended as a comprehensive guide, and should be used in conjunction with other operational guidance notes, such as those relating to conditionality and surveillance.
Keywords:
PP; spending; staff; poverty; spending floor; priority spending; country authorities; expenditure code; address weakness; Social assistance spending; Social protection spending; Education spending; Poverty reduction; Energy subsidies; Africa
Cover IMF Working Papers
Aid and Growth at the Regional Level
Axel Dreher
and
Steffen Lohmann
This paper brings the aid effectiveness debate to the sub-national level. We hypothesize the nonrobust results regarding the effects of aid on development in the previous literature to arise due to the effects of aid being insufficiently large to measurably affect aggregate outcomes. Using geocoded data for World Bank aid to a maximum of 2,221 first-level administrative regions (ADM1) and 54,167 second-level administrative regions (ADM2) in 130 countries over the 2000-2011 period, we test whether aid affects development, measured as nighttime light growth. Our preferred identification strategy exploits variation arising from interacting a variable that indicates whether or not a country has passed the threshold for receiving IDA's concessional aid with a recipient region's probability to receive aid, in a sample of 478 ADM1 regions and almost 8,400 ADM2 regions from 21 countries. Controlling for the levels of the interacted variables, the interaction provides a powerful and excludable instrument. Overall, we find significant correlations between aid and growth in ADM2 regions, but no causal effects.
Keywords:
WP; effect of aid; IDA-threshold effect; level of significance; term growth-effect; Aid Effectiveness; Geo-coding; World Bank; rainfall growth; aid-growth regression; growth OLS; IDA threshold; Agroindustries; Personal income; Population growth; Africa; Central Asia; South Asia; Global
Cover Le FMI et l’aide à l’Afrique subsaharienne
Le FMI et l’aide à l’Afrique subsaharienne
International Monetary Fund. Independent Evaluation Office

Abstract

Alors que le débat sur le rôle joué par le FMI auprès des pays à faible revenu se poursuit, le Bureau indépendant d’évaluation (BIE) a entrepris d’examiner les modalités et l’efficacité de l’aide que l’institution apporte à l’Afrique subsaharienne. Ce rapport s'intéresse plus particulièrement aux politiques conduites et aux pratiques suivies par le FMI dans les opérations appuyées par la facilité pour la réduction de la pauvreté et pour la croissance (FRPC), principal canal du travail opérationnel de l’institution dans les pays à faible revenu entre 1999 et 2005. Le rapport formule également des recommandations pour accroître la cohérence — tant réelle que perçue — des politiques et activités de l’institution liées à l’aide à l’Afrique subsaharienne.

Keywords:
IEOR; IEO; PRGF; Fund; policy; fund staff
Cover The IMF and Aid to Sub-Saharan Africa
The IMF and Aid to Sub-Saharan Africa
International Monetary Fund. Independent Evaluation Office

Abstract

This independent evaluation of the IMF’s role and performance in the determination and use of aid to low-income countries in sub-Saharan Africa is presented at a ground-level view. Country performance has improved in many sub-Saharan Africa countries over the period, and the report details the role of the IMF’s programs, as well as perceptions of that role. The report is an important contribution to following through on the IMF’s commitment to its Poverty Reduction Strategy and makes three main recommendations for improving the coherence—actual and perceived—of the IMF’s policies and actions relating to aid to sub-Saharan Africa going forward.

Keywords:
IEOR; IEO; PRGF; Fund; policy; fund staff; IEO report; core mandate; policy advice; PRGF program design; Poverty reduction strategy; Poverty reduction; Civil society; Government debt management; Sub-Saharan Africa; Africa; Global; IMF communications; IMF activity; IMF's instrument; Absorptive capacity; Poverty reduction and development
Cover Uma Avaliação sobre
Uma Avaliação sobre
o FMI e a Ajuda à África Subsariana
International Monetary Fund. Independent Evaluation Office

Abstract

This independent evaluation of the IMF’s role and performance in the determination and use of aid to low-income countries in sub-Saharan Africa is presented at a ground-level view. Country performance has improved in many sub-Saharan Africa countries over the period, and the report details the role of the IMF’s programs, as well as perceptions of that role. The report is an important contribution to following through on the IMF’s commitment to its Poverty Reduction Strategy and makes three main recommendations for improving the coherence—actual and perceived—of the IMF’s policies and actions relating to aid to sub-Saharan Africa going forward.

Keywords:
IEOR; IEO; PRGF; Fund; policy; fund staff
Cover IMF Staff Country Reports
Malawi: Poverty Reduction Strategy Paper: Annual Progress Report
International Monetary Fund
This paper reviews the Annual Progress Report on Malawi’s Poverty Reduction Strategy (MPRS). The poverty situation remained high over the implementation period of the MPRS. The government continued funding activities that have been perceived to have an impact on poverty reduction. The MPRS outlined a number of macroeconomic policies that have been adhered to achieve the macroeconomic targets. These policies have been mainly in the form of monetary, fiscal, and structural policies.
Keywords:
ISCR; CR; civil society; financial year; primary education; economic planning; inflation rate; secondary education; resource allocation; basic education; financial support; Agroindustries; Global
Cover IMF Working Papers
Aid Scaling Up: Do Wage Bill Ceilings Stand in the Way?
Ms. Annalisa Fedelino
,
Mr. Gerd Schwartz
, and
Marijn Verhoeven
This paper assesses whether the scaling up of aid and the resulting increase in government spending that is needed to meet the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) would be hampered by wage bill ceilings that are often part of government programs supported by the IMF's Poverty Reduction and Growth Facility (PRGF). Based on country case studies for 2003-05, the paper suggests that, in the past, wage bill ceilings have not restricted the use of available donor funds. Yet the paper offers a number of suggestions for further enhancing the flexibility of wage bill conditionality in PRGF-supported programs to respond to higher aid flows that may result in the future.
Keywords:
WP; wage bill; bill ceiling; bill conditionality; bill adjuster; bill PC; IMF conditionality; aid scaling up; MDGs; Wages; Public sector wages; Wage adjustments; Civil service reform; Government wage bill; Sub-Saharan Africa; Central America
Cover IMF Staff Country Reports
Malawi: Poverty Reduction Strategy Paper Annual Progress Report
International Monetary Fund
This paper analyzes key findings of the second progress report on Malawi’s Poverty Reduction Strategy Paper (PRSP). The second progress report has focused on assessing inputs, outputs, and to some extent outcomes of the implementation of the strategy. In terms of inputs, this report analyzes expenditure by pillars, protected pro-poor activities, and functional analysis of government expenditure pattern. The outputs and outcomes analysis are presented in the report by comparing the planned activities and their targets outlined in the strategy to the actual progress and targets achieved over the second year of the implementation period.
Keywords:
ISCR; CR; civil society; financial year; economic growth; local government; private sector; gross domestic product; basic education; open learning; public works; State party report; HIV and AIDS; Agroindustries; Africa; Southern Africa; Global
Cover Policy Papers
A Review of the Fund's External Communications Strategy
International Monetary Fund
This paper reviews implementation of the Fund’s external communications strategy and suggests issues that the Board may wish to discuss at its third meeting since 1998 on the subject. The strategy has been shaped by the previous Board discussions and more recent decisions and discussions on transparency, conditionality, PRSP/PRGF, the Independent Evaluation Office, and other issues. This paper represents more of a stocktaking than a fundamental reconsideration of the Fund’s approach to external communications. It examines the progress made in recent years and steps that might be taken with current resources to increase the effectiveness of the strategy.
Keywords:
PP; fund staff; transparency policy; economic policy; Fund authors review; fund management; Fund publication; policy advice; Fund mission; webcasting capacity; Fund program; Communications in revenue administration; Civil society organizations; Labor unions; Global; Middle East