This paper provides an update on the significant regulatory and supervisory development in the Spanish insurance sector since 2006. The Spanish authorities have taken steps to address a number of shortcomings identified in the 2006 Financial Sector Assessment Program. Most notably, cooperation...

A very ambitious fiscal adjustment effort is under way. Fiscal institutional and sectoral reforms have been elaborated for a more durable adjustment. Greece’s determination toward a comprehensive modernization of the health sector, beginning with a far-reaching reform of state enterprises...

The paper surveys the role of financial markets and fiscal institutions in the transformation process going on in Eastern and Central Europe. It highlights (a) the need to create some sort of “social ecological balance” necessary for the working of a modern market economy; (b) the need to...

Demographic pressures will materialize in many economies over the next few decades. We examine the macroeconomic impact of alternative fiscal adjustment and structural reform strategies to address these global aging pressures using the IMF's Global Fiscal Model (GFM). The results suggest...

How does fiscal policy fare in improving the underlying income distribution in Central America? We integrate the data from a number of existing tax and public expenditure studies for the countries in the region and find that the distributional effect of taxation is regressive but small. In...

This report provides the details of the IMF's projections and estimates of Vietnam on the summary of the tax systems; gross domestic product by expenditure categories; sector and ownership at current prices; gross domestic product by sector at constant prices during 1996–2002; consumer price...

The staff report for the 2004 Article IV Consultation on the Kingdom of the Netherlands—Netherlands highlights the economic developments and policies. The economy is beginning to emerge from an extended downturn. Meanwhile, against a background of soft labor market conditions and economic...

Countries generally tax the forestry sector to achieve the twin objectives of revenue maximization and sustainability of logging levels. In an ideal world of perfect markets and information, auctions would be the best instrument to determine the price of extraction rights. However, a number of...

This paper presents the Annual Progress Report (APR) 2004 on Senegal’s Poverty Reduction Strategy Paper (PRSP). The APR analyzes the 2004 macroeconomic framework for the purpose of comparing the forecasts under the various scenarios and the results obtained. Budgetary programming and...