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International Monetary Fund. African Dept.
This paper highlights Sierra Leone’s Poverty Reduction and Growth Strategy. The Government of Sierra Leone (GoSL) has launched a new Medium-Term National Development Plan (MTNDP). Crucial lessons have been learned in the implementation of the previous plan 2019-2023 that are important for the current acceleration and transformative plan to deliver a resilient and robust economy for Sierra Leone by 2030. Accordingly, five national goals for 2030 have been identified to accelerate efforts toward achieving the country’s vision of becoming an inclusive and green middle-income country by 2039. One of the goals is to create 500,000 jobs for the youth (with at least a 30% representation of women), including skilled and unskilled, long term, as well as seasonal jobs across all sectors by 2030 (directly related to Big 5.3). While the agriculture industry experienced modest growth, its reliance on the domestic market has impeded the ability to expand agricultural exports.
Francesca Caselli
,
Huidan Huidan Lin
,
Frederik G Toscani
, and
Jiaxiong Yao
Against the backdrop of the war in Ukraine, immigration into the European Union (EU) reached a historical high in 2022 and stayed significantly above pre-pandemic levels in 2023. The recent migration has helped accommodate strong labor demand, with around two-thirds of jobs created between 2019 and 2023 filled by non-EU citizens, while unemployment of EU citizens remained at historical lows. Ukrainian refugees also appear to have been absorbed into the labor market faster than previous waves of refugees in many countries. The stronger-than-expected net migration over 2020-23 into the euro area (of around 2 million workers) is estimated to push up potential output by around 0.5 percent by 2030—slightly less than half the euro area’s annual potential GDP growth at that time—even if immigrants are assumed to be 20 percent less productive than natives. This highlights the important role immigration can play in attenuating the effects of the Europe’s challenging demographic outlook. On the flipside, the large inflow had initial fiscal costs and likely led to some congestion of local public services such as schooling. Policy efforts should thus seek to continue to integrate migrants into the labor force while making sure that the supply of public services and amenities (including at the local level) keeps up with the population increase.
Joanne Tan
This paper examines the extent to which FDI has fragmented across countries, the ways it has done so, using a modified gravity approach. The paper finds that FDI fragmentation is, for now, not a widespread phenomenon. Instead, fragmentation is circumscribed in two ways. First, the paper finds that geo-economic fragmentation has occurred only for certain industries that likely have strategic value, including computer manufacturing, information and communications, transport, as well as professional, scientific and technical services. Secondly, fragmentation appears to be more pronounced for outward FDI from the US, notably in a shift of US FDI from China to advanced Europe and the rest of Asia. This shift appears to be driven by both the intensive and extensive margin. Fragmentation is also more pronounced for immediate rather than ultimate FDI, with evidence of ultimate parent companies aligning the geopolitical mix of their intermediaries more closely to that of their final FDI host destinations. Overall, the results suggest that fragmentation, where found, may be a response to targeted policies that have placed curbs on certain types of FDI on national security grounds, rather than an indiscriminate breakup of investment links between non-ally countries.
International Monetary Fund. African Dept.
This paper presents Côte d'Ivoire’s poverty reduction and growth strategy. The macroeconomic framework has been sound, with low inflation, a sustainable public sector, a robust banking system and a balanced external position. Poverty in Côte d'Ivoire has been steadily decreasing since 2016, continuing the trend observed since early 2011. Access to electricity has improved throughout the national territory. Actions have been undertaken to enhance the economy’s productivity through the strengthening of infrastructure and governance. In particular, Côte d’Ivoire is committed to advancing equality between men and women in all areas of public and private life, in order to empower women economically, socially, and politically and achieve a more egalitarian society. The government has undertaken to step up actions in favor of girls' education, increase access rates.
International Monetary Fund. European Dept.
This paper presents the Republic of Moldova’s Poverty Reduction and Growth Strategy. Taking into account the general low level of income and the high incidence of poverty, many citizens of the Republic of Moldova look at cultural opportunities and personal development according to the residual principle. The resources allocated by households to crop-related activities are very small. Cultural infrastructure is in an advanced state of physical degradation, which poses a real problem of accessibility of cultural products. The general and specific development goals which the SND suggests for the perspective of 2030 reflect the aspirations of increasing the welfare of the people of the Republic of Moldova, improving the lives of citizens, Europeanization of state institutions, strengthening democracy, the rule of law, respect for human rights, as well as bringing the Republic of Moldova closer to European standards and values, which will ensure the process of accession of our country to the European Union. In the medium to long term, sustainable income growth can be achieved by increasing the competitiveness of firms, raising labor productivity and integrating marginalized people and groups into the processes of economic value creation.
International Monetary Fund. Fiscal Affairs Dept.
and
International Monetary Fund. Strategy, Policy, & Review Department
The International Monetary Fund (IMF) is increasingly involved in offering policy advice on public pension issues to member countries. Public pension spending is important from both fiscal and welfare perspectives. Pension policy and its reforms can have significant fiscal and distribution implications, can influence labor supply and labor demand decisions, and may impact consumption and savings behavior. This technical note provides guidance on assessing public pension systems’ macrocriticality, i.e., sustainability, adequacy, and efficiency; it also discusses the issues and policy trade-offs to be considered when designing responses aiming to address these dimensions of the pension system. The paper emphasizes the importance of taking a long-term, comprehensive perspective when evaluating public pension spending and providing policy advice. Where feasible, reforms should be gradual and transparent to allow individuals ample time to adjust their work and savings decisions and to facilitate consumption smoothing over their lifecycle to avoid poverty in old age. It is also important to ensure that pension systems’ design and reforms do not lead to undesirable impacts in other policy areas including general tax compliance, health insurance coverage, labor force participation among older workers, or labor market informality. The paper emphasizes the importance country-specific social and economic objectives and constraints, as well as political economy realities – factors that can determine whether a pension reform is a success or failure.
International Monetary Fund. European Dept.
This Selected Issues paper analyzes the extent of corruption in Ukraine compared with other countries. The level of corruption in Ukraine is exceptionally high. This could severely undermine economic growth prospects by hindering private investment. Reducing corruption is therefore essential to speed economic convergence with the rest of Europe. Regional comparisons help identify best practices in reducing corruption. The Ukrainian authorities have recently adopted key measures that follow some of these best practices. The country is, however, facing several challenges, including the concentration of political and economic power in a small group of people, which may hamper effective anticorruption efforts.
International Monetary Fund
In recent years, the IMF has released a growing number of reports and other documents covering economic and financial developments and trends in member countries. Each report, prepared by a staff team after discussions with government officials, is published at the option of the member country.
International Monetary Fund
This Selected Issues paper for the Russian Federation discusses existing empirical efforts to measure the determinants of cross-country financial integration. Empirical studies that have adopted the gravity-model framework have found that it is generally successful in explaining bilateral financial flows. If the pension gap were to be financed through the budget, the model simulations suggest that fiscal room is best created by lowering government consumption. Consideration should be given to outsourcing the management of the mandatory contributions to private asset managers.