Country Reports
2019
February 21, 2019
Australia: Financial Sector Assessment Program-Technical Note-Systemic Risk Oversight and Macroprudential Policy
Description: This technical note reviews systematic risk oversight and macroprudential policy in Australia. The paper surveys key concerns affecting the Australian financial system, including the substantial increase in house prices and household indebtedness, the rising concentration of bank exposures, and potential volatility from the commercial real estate sector. The macroprudential policy response of the authorities has also been examined. Current arrangements have historically worked well and are based on a culture of strong inter-agency cooperation, and it is important that processes are appropriate to ensure ongoing focus on stability-related risks. The IMF team recommends that the authorities explore options for further extending their macroprudential toolkit, providing additional flexibility in responding to significant shocks, and reducing systemic vulnerabilities. The slowing in the growth of household indebtedness and lower house prices suggest that substantial new measures are not required at the current juncture, but a ‘readiness’ assessment would help to facilitate the introduction of new or expanded policy measures when required.
February 21, 2019
Australia: Financial Sector Assessment Program-Technical Note-Stress Testing the Banking Sector and Systemic Risk Analysis
Description: This technical note describes the financial stability analysis undertaken as part of the Financial Sector Assessment Program that primarily focuses on assessing the resilience of the banking system. Bank solvency appears relatively resilient to stress, although liquidity stress tests reveal some vulnerabilities given continued reliance on wholesale funding. The systemic risk analysis reveals a low degree of interconnectedness between the largest Australian banks and their global counterparts. However, the cross-border and interbank exposures data corroborates the systemic importance of the four largest banks and the view that the Australian banks are particularly vulnerable to external funding shocks. Cross-border analysis using country-level and individual bank-level supervisory data corroborates the view that the Australian banks are particularly vulnerable to external funding shocks given their dependence on wholesale funding from overseas. Policy recommendations made in the note include that additional investment in data and analytical tools would strengthen financial supervision and systemic risk oversight.
February 21, 2019
Australia: Financial Sector Assessment Program-Detailed Assessment of Observance-Basel Core Principles For Effective Banking Supervision
Description: This Detailed Assessment of Observance report specifies Base Core Principles (BCP) for effective banking supervision in Australia. An assessment of the effectiveness of banking supervision requires a review of the legal framework, and a detailed examination of the policies and practices of the institution(s) responsible for banking regulation and supervision. In line with the BCP methodology, the assessment focused on banking supervision and regulation in Australia and did not cover the specificities of regulation and supervision of other financial institutions. The assessment has made use of five categories to determine compliance: compliant; largely compliant, materially noncompliant, noncompliant, and non-applicable. The report insists that Australian Prudential Regulation Authority (APRA) should put more focus on assessing the various components of firms’ Internal Capital Adequacy Assessment Process and other firm-wide stress testing practices. A periodic more comprehensive assessment of banks’ risk management and governance frameworks will further enhance APRA’s supervisory approach.
February 19, 2019
Republic of Slovenia: Selected Issues
Description: This Selected Issues paper argues that revenue-neutral tax rebalancing would help Slovenia address long-term fiscal and growth challenges. The present tax-benefit system is supportive of distributional fairness in Slovenia; however, it is argued that tax reform can help bring stronger employment and productivity growth and enhanced resilience to the challenges of population ageing. The paper lays out the case for tax reform in view of long-run fiscal and growth challenges and it also reviews the current tax system and its weaknesses in comparison with international best practices. The paper also sets out tax reform options and uses a model simulation to illustrate the medium- to long-term fiscal and growth impact. The analysis on the tax rebalancing impact suggests that it can permanently and significantly increase potential output in Slovenia. The simulations indicate that a revenue-neutral tax rebalancing has positive fiscal and growth benefits over time.
February 18, 2019
Republic of Slovenia: 2018 Article IV Consultation-Press Release; Staff Report; and Statement by the Executive Director for Republic of Slovenia
Description: This Article IV Consultation highlights that the continued structural reforms are key to ensure long-term prosperity, while strengthening the economy’s resilience to shocks. Effective implementation of the recently enacted reforms of vocational training, apprenticeship, and adult education would help address skill shortages, support employment of younger and older people, and boost productivity growth. Macro-financial legacy issues remain in bank and corporate balance sheets, including small and medium enterprises’ nonperforming loans. Structural challenges persist with low productivity growth, skills shortages, high tax wedge, heavy regulatory system, and extensive presence of state-owned enterprises. Policies should focus on fiscal and structural reforms to rebuild fiscal buffers and increase productivity. Slovenia’s external position in 2018 is assessed as substantially stronger than suggested by fundamentals and desirable policies; however the current account is expected to revert toward its norm in the medium term. Continued structural reforms are key to ensure long-term prosperity, while strengthening the economy’s resilience to shocks. Effective implementation of the recently enacted reforms of vocational training, apprenticeship, and adult education would help address skill shortages, support employment of younger and older people, and boost productivity growth.
February 17, 2019
Nepal: 2018 Article IV Consultation-Press Release; Staff Report; and Statement by the Executive Director for Nepal
Description: This Article IV Consultation highlights that following a prolonged period of tepid growth, economic activity in Nepal has picked up, reflecting cyclical factors and some structural improvements, especially in electricity supply. Discussions focused on policies needed to stem rising balance of payments pressures, safeguard financial stability, and structural reforms to ensure high, sustainable and inclusive growth. Continued improvements in revenue performance are seen to be important to maintain a strong fiscal position and meet capital spending needs. The IMF staff welcomed the authorities’ efforts to increase domestic revenue mobilization. The authorities broadly agreed with the IMF staff’s assessment and fiscal policy advice. The authorities noted that the transition to fiscal federalism and the pickup of reconstruction. Progress has been made with putting in place a fiscal federal framework but more needs to be done to ensure sustainability, make budgets more realistic and spending more efficient, and build implementation capacity.
February 17, 2019
Nepal: Selected Issues
Description: This Selected Issues paper examines the degree to which inflation co-moves between India and a panel of countries in Asia. The paper shows that the considerable co-movement in headline inflation rates between India and Nepal is driven almost exclusively by food-inflation co-movement. By contrast, the role for inflation spillovers emanating from India in driving non-food inflation in Nepal appears limited. The implication is that Nepal should rely on domestic monetary policy rather than stable inflation in India to achieve stable domestic inflation. The main takeaway from the results is that food inflation co-movement between India and other countries is higher in cases where the co-movement in rainfall deviations from seasonal norms is highest. Since core inflation co-movement is weak, idiosyncratic domestic factors such as economic slack, exchange-rate movements, and differing degrees of passthrough from food- and energy-price shocks play an important role. This finding is critically important for monetary policy, especially since domestic policy is primarily effective only in controlling core inflation. Thus, domestic monetary policy needs to be calibrated to domestic inflationary pressures—Nepal cannot necessarily rely on stable inflation in India to achieve stable domestic inflation.
February 15, 2019
Republic of Fiji: 2018 Article IV Consultation-Press Release and Staff Report
Description: This Article IV Consultation highlights that the economy is recovering well from several natural disasters, supported by accommodative fiscal and monetary policies. Growth performance picked up in recent years with improved political stability, though average growth rates were still lower than in other emerging and developing countries. Fiscal buffers have been used and external conditions, including oil prices and growth prospects of main trading partners, are becoming less favorable. Improving the overall business environment and governance is expected to raise potential growth by mobilizing private investment, enhancing productivity, and diversifying the economy. An improvement in the overall business environment is essential to achieve the ambitious growth targets laid out in the National Development Plan. Streamlining procedures to do business, accelerating the activation of the credit reporting agency, and reducing tax compliance costs has been recommended.
February 12, 2019
The Kingdom of the Netherlands—Netherlands: 2019 Article IV Consultation-Press Release; Staff Report; and Statement by the Executive Director for The Kingdom of the Netherlands—Netherlands
Description: This Article IV Consultation highlights that the Dutch economy has grown faster than the euro area average over the past few years reflecting recovering consumption and investment, and strong net exports. Progress with tackling long-standing imbalances in the households and corporate sectors, and thus external imbalances, has lagged. Households remain highly leveraged and their consumption constrained by a stagnating disposable income. In the corporate sector, dominated by large multinational corporations, investment is low but savings are high, and developments are diverging with domestic small and medium enterprises relatively stagnant. Strong fiscal performance in recent years has boosted buffers that can now be used to reduce distortions and strengthen potential growth. The report recommends that it is important to harmonize tax benefits and social security contributions for different types of employment to reduce labor market duality while increasing overall labor market flexibility. Using fiscal space to address household and corporate imbalances is desirable and is unlikely to jeopardize long-term fiscal sustainability.
February 12, 2019
The Kingdom of the Netherlands—Netherlands: Selected Issues
Description: This Selected Issues papers provide details of the sources and uses of the non-financial corporation saving and highlights the role of multinational corporations (MNCs). The paper also discusses the implications to the external sector assessment and policy recommendations. The large Dutch international investment position reflects its status as an international corporate center. The study shows that large trade surpluses and small primary income balances are consistent with the dominance of MNCs in the Netherlands’ external positions. Separating MNCs’ activities from the Dutch current account for the external sector assessment is expected to help identify underlying policy distortions. Separating MNCs’ activities would help identify imbalances of other economic sectors. The small and medium enterprises are stagnant and remain financially constrained. Small household net saving hides the fact that households are still highly leveraged, and their consumption constrained by a stagnating disposable income. Therefore, improving statistics and separating MNCs’ activities from both internal and external accounts would help identify domestic policy distortions and address imbalances effectively.