High-Level Summary Technical Assistance Reports
The High-Level Summary Technical Assistance Report series provides high-level summaries of the assistance provided to IMF capacity development recipients, describing the high-level objectives, findings, and recommendations.
2024
May 10, 2024
Barbados
Description: The technical assistance is focused on enhancing the joint financial stability report of the Central Bank of Barbados and the Barbados Financial Services Commission. The mission concluded that the preparation of a detailed FSR production plan and communication strategy is of critical importance and could facilitate improvements and promote the report. The report should encompass all crucial elements of financial stability assessment and needs to be streamlined to follow the central storyline with key messages. The quality of the report could be further enhanced though advancements in the analytical toolkit employed and the utilization of all available data sources.
May 8, 2024
South Africa
Description: South Africa has many elements of sound fiscal transparency practices. Based on an assessment of fiscal transparency practices against the IMF’s Fiscal Transparency Code, South Africa’s practices are strongest in fiscal reporting, followed by fiscal forecasting and budgeting, and weakest in fiscal risk analysis. South Africa’s Balance Sheet public sector net worth – including assumptions for the values of non-reported assets – is estimated to be 100 percent of GDP. There is room to improve South Africa’s fiscal reporting, budget transparency, and management of fiscal risks.
May 3, 2024
Kingdom of Eswatini: Financial Sector Stability Review
Description: The IMF conducted a diagnostic review of the financial system of the Kingdom of Eswatini and proposed a Technical Assistance Roadmap to support the authorities’ detection of risks and vulnerabilities and to enhance capacity in financial sector oversight. The financial stability module focused on areas agreed with the country authorities: financial stability and systemic risk monitoring, macroprudential frameworks and tools; crisis management and financial safety net; and supervision and regulation of banks, nonbank deposit-taking institutions, insurance, and retirement funds. The financial sector statistics module focused on key gaps in monetary and financial statistics and financial soundness indicators that hamper financial stability analysis.
May 1, 2024
Guinea Bissau: Further Improvements in Tax Compliance
Description: This summary provides an overview of the guidance provided to the Guinea-Bissau tax administration on the consolidation of its modernization agenda, underpinned by the tax administration´s digital transformation. Starting amid the COVID-19 pandemic, the digitalization journey has progressively improved taxpayer services with FAD guidance. The tax administration reform´s next steps should focus on the use of information technology and third-party data to enhance timely voluntary tax compliance, enforce accurate reporting, and incentivize and monitor revenue mobilization. The TA report also reviewed the next steps to the Value-Added Tax implementation.
April 24, 2024
Mongolia: Public Investment Management Assessment Update
Description: An IMF team found that Mongolia has made progress in public investment management since the 2016 PIMA. However, several challenges persist, and new issues are emerging. The team has identified five high-priority recommendations that could improve PIM processes and support the effective implementation of the government's investment aspirations.
April 16, 2024
Cabo Verde: Climate Policy Assessment
Description: Cabo Verde faces development challenges from multiple structural factors, including insularity, territorial discontinuity, fragility of ecosystems, and scarcity of natural resources, namely water and arable land. Climate change implications are amplifying these challenges. As an island extension of the arid Sahel zone, Cabo Verde faces severe water shortage, which the country addresses more and more through energy intensive desalination, using electricity produced largely by thermal power plants, which depend entirely on imported fossil fuels. The resulting high energy prices directly impact the cost of water production. In conjunction with climate change induced aridity, the energy-water-climate nexus presents the core development challenge for the country.
April 16, 2024
Arabic Republic of Egypt: Egyptian Tax Authority: Maintaining Momentum in the Implementation of the Medium-Term Revenue Strategy (MTRS)
Description: The Egyptian Tax Administration (ETA) is undergoing a significant transformation within the framework of the MTRS. This summary provides an overview of ETA's progress in implementing the MTRS tax administration initiatives and highlights priority areas for future action. The report focused on key considerations to maintain reform momentum in tax administration under the MTRS in the areas of governance arrangements, organizational structure, human resource management, digitalization, and risk management. The report also contains a mid-term capacity development plan with identified priority areas to further support implementation of the MTRS in the area of tax administration.
April 10, 2024
Iraq: General Commission for Taxes: Strategic Direction for Prioritized Reforms
Description: The Government of Iraq has embarked on a considerable modernization journey for the General Commission for Taxes (GCT) with the goal of expanding the revenue base following a tax/GDP decline of 1 percentage point in 2022 (from 2 percent in 2020). Taking into account the internal and external challenges, and the findings of the 2022 Tax Administration Diagnostic Assessment Tool (TADAT) and the existing plans of the authorities, the report highlighted core reform areas to be included in a reform plan for the GCT. The report also included an indicative integrated FAD/METAC mid-term capacity development (CD) plan for the next three years.
March 15, 2024
Jordan: Developing Supervisory Review and Evaluation Process SRP Framework
Description: The International Monetary Fund (IMF)’s Middle East Regional Technical Assistance Center (METAC) is currently assisting the Central Bank of Jordan (CBJ) in enhancing its risk-based supervision through the development of a Supervisory Review and Evaluation SRP framework inspired from European Central Bank (ECB) methodology. The Technical Assistance (TA) mission is part of a multi-step medium-term project. The TA mission aimed to design, in coordination with CBJ, a progressive multi-step roadmap defining the major milestones for a full implementation of SRP. The mission noted that several dimensions should be taken into consideration when implementing the SRP, most notably bridging the data gap by building a fully-fledged supervisory risk database through a dedicated IT project, assessing whether the current organization of the Banking Supervisory Department should be adjusted, and progressively cover all material sources of risks in the SRP.
March 12, 2024
Report on Financial Soundness Indicators Technical Assistance
Description: The mission assisted the staff of the Maldives Monetary Authority (MMA) to compile financial soundness indicators (FSIs) in line with the IMF’s 2019 FSIs Compilation Guide, improve the data frequency of FSIs for deposit takers to monthly, and prepare new FSIs for insurance corporations.