Corporate priorities, government policies, and public demand are driving companies across the world to improve their environmental and social footprint. In South Africa, the Petco Producer Responsibility Organisation NPC is scaling up the recycling of plastics, while improving livelihoods for...

This Joint Staff Advisory Note focuses on the Poverty Reduction Strategy Paper (PRSP) for Albania. The note analyzes the National Strategy for Development and Integration (NSDI) program, which represents a significant improvement in process over the previous PRSP. The note discusses that the...

Poverty risk is most marked for children, displaced persons and returnees, unemployed, and people with low education. Basic goals of the macroeconomic framework of the mid-term development strategy of Bosnia and Herzegovina are to reduce the overall public expenditures, lower the public debt,...

The Growth and Social Protection Strategy (GSPS) provides the framework for Dominica’s economic and social policies over the next five years and sets out the macroeconomic framework; the growth strategy, including the enabling environment for private enterprise and sectoral strategies;...

This Selected Issues paper analyzes the competitive threats to the tourism sector in the Eastern Caribbean Currency Union (ECCU). The paper concludes that the ECCU countries have lost competitiveness globally and vis-à-vis newly emergent Caribbean tourist destinations as a result of both price...

Japan’s position is one of the largest and richest economies in the world. Tokyo as a financial marketplace is not a major intermediator of global capital flows. The current macroeconomic environment is conducive to spillovers being larger than captured by the empirical analysis. Apart...

This Selected Issues paper reports that the Philippines is influenced by global developments through both trade and financial channels. Weaker global growth hurts demand for Philippine exports, which in turn affects consumption and investment. The financial system has only limited exposure to...

This 2012 Article IV Consultation reports that the German economy’s performance has been remarkable despite facing considerable headwinds. Several conditions are now in place in Germany for a domestic demand-led recovery. Employment creation has been robust and unemployment at 5.3 percent...

Staff Report for the 2012 Article IV consultation, prepared by a staff team of the IMF, following discussions that ended on July 6, 2012, with the officials of Indonesia on economic developments and policies. Based on information available at the time of these discussions, the staff report was...

The Chinese authorities welcomed the spillover analysis, noting that their policies have important global spillover effects. The note also discusses China’s evolving role in global trade, impact of rebalancing on the supply chain, estimating China’s spillovers, elasticities...