Country Reports
2025
February 24, 2025
Qatar: 2024 Article IV Consultation-Press Release; Staff Report; and Statement by the Executive Director for Qatar
Description: Growth normalization after the 2022 FIFA World Cup continued with signs of activities strengthening more recently. Fiscal and external surpluses softened mainly due to lower hydrocarbon prices. Banks are healthy but pockets of vulnerabilities remain. Reform momentum has strengthened, guided by the Third National Development Strategy (NDS3).
February 20, 2025
Thailand: 2024 Article IV Consultation-Press Release; Staff Report; and Statement by the Executive Director for Thailand
Description: Thailand’s cyclical recovery is underway, though it has yet to become broad-based. Growth is projected to accelerate moderately, reaching 2.7 percent in 2024 and 2.9 percent in 2025, supported by the rebound of tourism-related activities and fiscal stimulus. The slow recovery, weaker than in ASEAN peers, is rooted in Thailand’s longstanding structural weaknesses and emerging headwinds that also contribute to a muted inflation trajectory. Significant uncertainty in the external environment and downside risks cloud the outlook.
February 19, 2025
Liberia: First Review Under the Extended Credit Facility Arrangement and Request for a Waiver of Nonobservance of a Performance Criterion-Press Release; Staff Report; and Statement by the Executive Director for Liberia
Description: Liberia continues to face substantial long-term development challenges. Resource constraints and substantial gaps in infrastructure and human capital have hindered Liberia’s growth prospects and the authorities’ efforts to improve living standards. Addressing these challenges will require sustained efforts to mobilize additional revenues, enhance financial stability, improve public financial management, and seek external grants and highly concessional loans for key capital investment projects. Improvements in these areas would help create fiscal space to scale up investment in infrastructure and human capital, thus unleashing the country’s growth potential.
February 11, 2025
Cabo Verde: Fifth Review Under the Extended Credit Facility Arrangement, Request for a Waiver of Nonobservance of Quantitative Performance Criterion, Modification of Quantitative Performance Criteria, and Second Review Under the Resilience and Sustainability Facility Arrangement-Press Release; Staff Report; and Statement by the Executive Director for Cabo Verde
Description: Cabo Verde's recent strong economic growth is driven by tourism, exports, private consumption, and remittances, but hampered by slow government investment. The government has maintained macro-financial stability but faces risks from global uncertainties, supply chain issues, and commodity price fluctuations.
February 7, 2025
Nicaragua: 2024 Article IV Consultation-Press Release; Staff Report; and Statement by the Executive Director for Nicaragua
Description: The Nicaraguan economy is experiencing robust growth. Real GDP growth accelerated to around 4½ percent in 2023 and the first half of 2024, from about 3.8 percent in 2022, on the back of robust domestic demand, while inflation is moderating. Prudent macroeconomic policies and record-high remittances sustained this performance, a decrease in the estimated poverty ratio, and also led to twin surpluses, a steady decline in debt, and the accumulation of strong buffers. Gross international reserves reached US$5.7 billion, or 7.2 months of imports, by end-October 2024. The economy remains open and resilient, after confronting multiple large shocks, and on a backdrop of transfers of private property to the state, international sanctions, and reorientation of official financing. Going forward, domestic and international political developments may impact economic performance, by potentially increasing the cost of doing business and impacting other cross-border flows.
February 7, 2025
Republic of Korea: 2024 Article IV Consultation-Press Release; Staff Report; and Statement by the Executive Director for the Republic of Korea
Description: The Korean economy has remained resilient against multiple shocks. Economic growth has recovered, inflation has steadily declined, and financial stability risks have decreased. However, downside risks have increased amid high uncertainty from policy shifts in major trading partners and recent domestic political developments. Key medium-term challenges are to boost the growth potential amidst rapid population aging, and to adapt to shifting trade patterns, transformative technological change, and climate vulnerabilities.
February 5, 2025
Chile: 2024 Article IV Consultation-Press Release; and Staff Report
Description: The economy is broadly balanced but modest potential growth has constrained increases in living standards and makes it difficult to address fiscal and social needs. Policy priorities are therefore mainly of structural nature. They include boosting productivity and employment as well as strengthening fiscal, external, and financial sector buffers—particularly in the context of a challenging global environment.