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Marie S Kim
,
Lilia Razlog
,
Juan Carlos Vilanova
, and
Juan Lorenzo Maldonado
At the request of the authorities, a joint World Bank-IMF technical assistance (TA) mission visited Tashkent, Uzbekistan during October 9–20, 2023 to help the authorities in developing a mediumterm debt management strategy (MTDS), designing an Annual Borrowing Plan (ABP), and to train the authorities on the use of the Medium-term Debt Management Strategy Analytical tool (MTDS AT) and ABP AT. The mission presented its main findings and recommendations to the authorities and left a draft report at the end of the mission.
Khaled Eltokhy
,
Nicoletta Feruglio
,
Kezhou Miao
,
Arturo Navarro
, and
Eivind Tandberg
This How to Note discusses how low-income developing countries (LIDCs) can strengthen the effectiveness and efficiency of their public investment. The note draws on Public Investment Management Assessments and focuses on eight institutions that are likely to be key reform priorities in many LIDCs: project appraisal, multi-year budgeting, maintenance, project selection, procurement, availability of funding, project management, and monitoring of public assets. For each of these, the note discusses basic practices, which should be realistic initial reform objectives for low-capacity countries, as well as medium practices that may be relevant objectives for medium-term reforms. The note also discusses how to overcome reform implementation challenges and consolidate the reforms and provides examples of action plans to implement the different reforms.
International Monetary Fund. Statistics Dept.
A technical assistance mission assisted the Statistics Agency under the President of the Republic of Uzbekistan (SA) in conducting a major revision of national accounts time series. Based on the results of the 2023 survey on non-observed economy (NOE) in hotels, restaurants, and other services, the 2024 major revision increases the nominal GDP for 2017–2023 in the range of 10–12 percent. The mission reviewed the results of the 2024 major revision and provided recommendations for improvement before their publication. These improvements to data and methods will improve the understanding of the Uzbekistan economy, both for domestic policymaking and international surveillance.
International Monetary Fund. Statistics Dept.
A technical assistance mission assisted the Statistics Agency under the President of the Republic of Uzbekistan (SA) in conducting a major revision of national accounts time series. Based on the results of the 2023 survey on non-observed economy (NOE) in hotels, restaurants, and other services, the 2024 major revision increases the nominal GDP for 2017–2023 in the range of 10–12 percent. The mission reviewed the results of the 2024 major revision and provided recommendations for improvement before their publication. These improvements to data and methods will improve the understanding of the Uzbekistan economy, both for domestic policymaking and international surveillance.
International Monetary Fund. Middle East and Central Asia Dept.
The 2024 Article IV Consultation discusses that Uzbekistan’s growth momentum continues on the back of far-reaching structural reforms to liberalize its economy, favorable commodity prices, and notable increases in financial and income flows. Growth is expected to remain robust at 5.4 percent in 2024, despite the appropriate withdrawal of fiscal stimulus and slowing trading partner growth. In 2025, growth is projected to pick up to around 5½ percent. Needed increases in administered energy prices would temporarily raise inflation to 11.5 percent by end-2024. The government’s planned fiscal consolidation is appropriate and will help reduce inflation and imports while protecting the vulnerable. Further efforts are needed to broaden the tax base, modernize the tax system, improve the efficiency of public spending, and strengthen public financial management. Monetary policy should remain focused on reducing inflation to the central bank’s target and be tightened if energy price reforms spill over to core inflation and inflation expectations. Structural reforms should focus on reducing the state’s role in the economy, promoting women’s participation in the labor market, advancing decarbonization and climate adaptation initiatives, and enhancing governance and transparency, building on progress already made.
International Monetary Fund. Middle East and Central Asia Dept.
This Selected Issues paper discusses key channels by which fiscal consolidation impacts short- and medium-term growth, examines the international experience on how to make fiscal consolidation more growth friendly, and analyzes policy implications for Uzbekistan. A large part of the adjustment is implemented with high-quality efficiency-enhancing measures: reducing energy subsidies, improving the targeting of social spending, and curbing policy lending. The World Bank Public Expenditure Review notes that nonwage spending in health and education is low and crowded out by high wage bills, which have been growing in recent years as efforts to improve pay in these areas were implemented. This points to the need to review the adequacy of nonwage spending in these sectors and undertake wage bill rationalization more broadly since these are large sectors of public employment. In the specific case of health spending, consideration should be given to strengthening primary care and introducing task-shifting which will lead to greater efficiency from health wage bill expenditure by shifting its composition over the medium term. Unify the public investment process irrespective of the financing source; create a unified appraisal and selection process; establish a single project pipeline; and improve project monitoring and evaluation to increase public investment efficiency.
International Monetary Fund. Statistics Dept.
This technical assistance (TA) report on Republic of Uzbekistan discusses summary of mission outcomes and priority recommendations of National Accounts mission. The Caucasus, Central Asia, and Mongolia Regional Capacity Development Center (CCAMTAC) conducted a TA mission on source data for national accounts. The main purpose of the mission was to assist the Statistics Agency (SA) of Uzbekistan in improving source data for compiling annual and quarterly gross domestic product (GDP). The national accounts team has made very good progress in compiling and disseminating quarterly national accounts aggregates on a discrete basis, which are required for subscription to the IMF’s Special Data Dissemination Standard (SDDS). The mission reviewed and discussed source data collection issues for all GDP activities. The mission reviewed the compilation of some GDP aggregates. The methods for quarterly GDP discrete estimates follow international best practices. During the meeting with senior management, it has been agreed that all improvements suggested to source data would be taken into account and implemented. Moreover, cooperation with tax authorities should be sought to increase data coverage for small and micro units, as well as individual producers.
International Monetary Fund. Statistics Dept.
This technical assistance (TA) report on Republic of Uzbekistan focuses on details of National Accounts Statistics mission. Significant progress on national accounts made by The Statistics Agency under the President of the Republic of Uzbekistan (SA) in recent years has been reflected in the compilation of discrete quarterly gross domestic product (GDP) and the implementation of 2008 System of National Accounts (SNA), although there are some areas for further improvement. The mission noted that the quality of national accounts is highly dependent on the quality of data sources, and their improvement should be a priority for the SA. The mission reviewed the structure of gross value added at current prices and the share of each sector in GDP and identified sectors with underestimated levels of non-observed economy (NOE). The mission recommended that the SA conduct sector-specific NOE surveys in the relevant sectors. The mission also reviewed the compilation of supply and use tables and developed a plan for further improvement. The mission recommended that the SA apply sampling methods when planning each survey. High-quality questionnaires and representative sampling are important for sector specific surveys. The sampling of households should be stratified and should include all geographical regions of the country.
Mr. Philip Barrett
and
Euihyun Bae
This paper is the second update of the Reported Social Unrest Index (Barrett et al. 2022), outlining developments in global social unrest since March 2022. It shows that the fraction of countries experiencing major social unrest events has been stable. Reasons for social unrest can be broadly categorized as stemming from sdebate over constitutional issues, protests connected to specific policies, and other generalized disorder.
Mr. Serkan Arslanalp
,
Mr. Barry J. Eichengreen
, and
Chima Simpson-Bell
After moving slowly downward for the better part of four decades, central bank gold holdings have risen since the Global Financial Crisis. We identify 14 “active diversifiers,” defined as countries that purchased gold and raised its share in total reserves by at least 5 percentage points over the last two decades. In contrast to the diversification of foreign currency reserves, which has been undertaken by advanced and developing country central banks alike, active diversifiers into gold are exclusively emerging markets. We document two sets of factors contributing to this trend. First, gold appeals to central bank reserve managers as a safe haven in periods of economic, financial and geopolitical volatility, when the return on alternative financial assets is low. Second, the imposition of financial sanctions by the United States, United Kingdom, European Union and Japan, the main reserve-issuing economies, is associated with an increase in the share of central bank reserves held in the form of gold. There is some evidence that multilateral sanctions imposed by these, and other countries have a larger impact than unilateral sanctions on the share of reserves held in gold, since the latter leave scope for shifting reserves into the currencies of other non-sanctioning countries.