Country Reports
2018
March 8, 2018
Belgium: Selected Issues
Description: This Selected Issues paper analyzes productivity growth in Belgium. It highlights that Belgium’s subdued productivity growth can be explained by a combination of sectoral employment shifts, barriers to competition, the declining quality of infrastructure, and an aging workforce. The shift of employment toward lower productivity service sectors, common to many advanced economies, has been more pronounced in Belgium and explains half of the productivity gap with neighboring countries. Population aging is another secular factor that has contributed to the productivity slowdown. In addition, barriers to competition in some service sectors have lowered productivity growth and raised rents in these sectors.
March 7, 2018
Nigeria: Selected Issues
Description: This Selected Issues paper analyzes mobilization of tax revenues in Nigeria. Low non-oil revenue mobilization is affecting the government’s objectives to expand growth-enhancing expenditure priorities, foster higher growth, and comply with its fiscal rule which limits the federal government deficit to no more than 3 percent of GDP. There is significant revenue potential from structural tax measures. A broad-based and comprehensive tax reform program is needed in the short and medium term to address these objectives and generate sustainable revenue growth by broadening the bases of income and consumption taxes, closing loopholes and leakage created by corporate tax holidays and the widespread use of other associated tax expenditures, as well as creating incentives for the subnational tiers of government to raise their own source revenues.
March 7, 2018
Nigeria: 2018 Article IV Consultation-Press Release; Staff Report; and Statement by the Executive Director for Nigeria
Description: This 2018 Article IV Consultation highlights that the Nigerian economy is exiting recession but remains vulnerable. New foreign exchange measures, rising oil prices, attractive yields on government securities, and a tighter monetary policy have contributed to better foreign exchange availability, increased reserves to a four-year high, and contained inflationary pressures. Economic growth reached 0.8 percent in 2017, driven mainly by recovering oil production. Inflation declined to 15.4 percent year-over-year by end-December, from 18.5 percent at end-2016. Higher oil prices are supporting the near-term projections, but medium-term projections indicate that growth would remain relatively flat, with continuing declines in per capita real GDP under unchanged policies.
March 7, 2018
Republic of Mozambique: 2017 Article IV Consultation-Press Release; Staff Report; and Statement by the Executive Director for the Republic of Mozambique
Description: This 2017 Article IV Consultation highlights that growth in Mozambique decelerated in 2016 to 3.8 percent (from 6.6 percent in 2015). The latest data show that the economy grew by 3.7 percent in 2017, driven by a recovery in agriculture and mining activity. A tight monetary stance, coupled with exchange rate appreciation, led to a steep fall in inflation to 6.3 percent (year-over-year) in January 2018, from a peak of 26 percent in November 2016. The outlook remains challenging. Absent further policy action, real GDP growth is expected to further decline over time while inflation would remain at current levels. The fiscal deficit would expand, leading to further accumulation of public debt and crowding out of the private sector.
March 7, 2018
Malaysia: 2018 Article IV Consultation-Press Release; Staff Report; and Statement by the Executive Director for Malaysia
Description: This 2018 Article IV Consultation highlights that the Malaysian economy has shown resilience in recent years despite external shocks and has continued to perform well. Progress was made toward achieving high income status and improving inclusion. Median household income has risen further and the already-low national poverty ratio declined. Real GDP growth has surprised on the upside in 2017, and is estimated at 5.8 percent for the year, driven by domestic demand and robust exports. Growth is projected to start to decelerate from its 2017 peak, remaining above potential at 5.3 percent in 2018, and converging to its potential rate of close to 5 percent in the medium term.
March 7, 2018
Republic of Mozambique: Selected Issues
Description: This Selected Issues paper documents the main features of the current monetary policy regime in Mozambique, describe ongoing structural policy changes announced by the central bank, and analyze the main challenges facing the central bank in the process to modernize its monetary policy framework. Recognizing the signaling value of interest rates to anchor inflation expectations and help influence market interest rates, the paper usefully focuses on the needed reforms to enable the central bank to successfully replace monetary aggregates by interest rate as the main instrument of monetary policy. Deepening the understanding of the obstacles on the way to a smooth monetary transmission, further building the central bank inflation forecasting capacity, strengthening the coordination between fiscal and monetary policies, enhancing central bank communications and modernizing the legal framework to ensure central bank operational autonomy are essential to the success of the new monetary regime. Importantly, the presence of a committed and strong technical team and a reform-oriented management should greatly facilitate the implementation of these vital central bank reforms.
March 7, 2018
Malaysia: Selected Issues
Description: This Selected Issues Paper presents an overview of the Malaysian labor market. Malaysia’s economy and its labor market have undergone significant shifts in the last three decades. The labor market is now more urban and has a higher share of female workers and workers with tertiary education. Employment has kept pace with labor supply, keeping the unemployment rate stable for more than a decade. Meanwhile, reliance on noncitizen workers has also increased against the backdrop of slower growth in citizen population. Continuing with its economic transformation, Malaysia aspires to achieve high-income status, with a labor market that is ready for the economy of the future: a market that can support more female workers, more skilled jobs, and a higher labor productivity growth.
March 6, 2018
Georgia: Technical Assistance Report on the Financial Accounts and Financial Soundness Indicators Mission
Description: This Technical Assistance Report discusses the findings and recommendations made by the IMF mission regarding the financial accounts (FA) and financial soundness indicators in Georgia. One main objective of the mission was to assist the National Bank of Georgia (NBG) in the compilation of quarterly flow FA by institutional sector; estimating transactions, revaluations, and other changes in the volume of assets (OCVA). It was observed that FA are being produced by the Monetary and Statistics Division for internal use only, because for public dissemination the NBG wants first to develop automatic procedures for the estimation of revaluations and OCVA in its database. It is expected that by May 2018 business intelligence software will be fully operational for this purpose.
March 5, 2018
Solomon Islands: 2017 Article IV Consultation-Press Release; Staff Report; and Statement by the Executive Director for Solomon Islands
Description: This 2017 Article IV Consultation highlights that the economy of the Solomon Islands grew by 3.5 percent in 2016 driven by a peak in the forestry sector. Growth remained solid in 2017 and is projected at 3.0 for 2018, buoyed by infrastructure spending, fisheries and agriculture, although logging production is slowing down. Inflation is contained at an annual rate of just 1.6 percent in October 2017. The current account deficit has widened a little but international reserves levels are comfortable. The fiscal deficit is expected to have reached 4.0 percent of GDP in 2017 and to widen further in 2018. The risks to the economy are on the downside with the weakening fiscal position heightening vulnerability to shocks.
March 5, 2018
Kingdom of Lesotho: Selected Issues
Description: This Selected Issues paper provides further background on the macrofinancial sector analysis that informed Lesotho’s 2017 Article IV consultation. Lesotho’s financial sector is small, concentrated, and lacks financial inclusion, although mobile banking services and financial cooperatives offer some encouraging potential. Lesotho’s most important vulnerabilities are exposure to developments in South Africa and dependence on revenues from the Southern African Customs Union (SACU). Shocks to SACU revenues can become a source of systemic risk by affecting the fiscal position and the balance of payments. The financial system will be affected by both channels, with substantial implications if the shock is permanent. This paper focuses on two potential consequences of a severe SACU revenue shock for the financial system: A decline in reserves that may threaten the sustainability of the hard currency peg with the South African rand, and the impact of a forced fiscal consolidation on household income and the quality of credit to households, affecting both bank and nonbank lenders. It turns out that financial shallowness and lack of inclusion may be a defining feature of the formal banking system; thereby raising questions about potential trade-offs between inclusiveness and financial stability.