Timor–Leste’s initial efforts to develop a stable and healthy economy have been interrupted by the civil unrest of the past two years. The security situation remains fragile and an economic burden. The key challenge remains how to manage the abundant petroleum revenue to alleviate...

This paper discusses key findings of the Second Review Under the Stand-By Arrangement for Peru. The economy continued to perform well in 2004. Real GDP grew by 5.1 percent, inflation was 3.5 percent at end-December, and the fiscal deficit of the combined public sector narrowed to 1.1 percent of...

This article investigates how financial development helps to reduce poverty directly through the McKinnon conduit effect and indirectly through economic growth. The results obtained with data for a sample of developing countries from 1966 through 2000 suggest that the poor benefit from the...

The 2006 Article IV Consultation, First Review Under the Three-Year Arrangement Under the Poverty Reduction and Growth Facility of Sierra Leone reviews sustainability of higher economic growth and reduction of poverty. Sierra Leone has made progress in improving governance and transparency, but...

Peru’s macroeconomic policies continue to be strong under the Stand-By Arrangement (SBA). Executive Directors appreciated the implementation of policies to entrench macroeconomic stability, lower poverty, and lessen vulnerabilities, and also emphasized the need to maintain a prudent...

This volume examines the impact on economic performance of structural policies-policies that increase the role of market forces and competition in the economy, while maintaining appropriate regulatory frameworks. The results reflect a new dataset covering reforms of domestic product markets,...

This paper presents the Annual Progress Report on Vietnam’s Poverty Reduction Strategy. The industrial output and export turnover have continuously increased and exceeded the targeted plan. The entire social investment has been fairly well increased, especially that of the private sector,...

This note raises the IMF’s profile on a number of issues related to inequality, unemployment, governance, etc. It builds on earlier empirical work that examined correlations between growth downbreaks/duration of growth spells and a range of macro/policy/institutional factors. This paper is...

Over the past decades, workers' remittances have grown to become one of the largest sources of financial flows to developing countries, often dwarfing other widely-studied sources such as private capital and official aid flows. While it is undeniable that remittances have poverty-alleviating and...

Growth is pro-poor if the poverty measure of interest falls. This implies three potential sources of pro-poor growth: (a) a high rate of growth of average incomes; (b) a high sensitivity of poverty to growth in average incomes; and (c) a poverty-reducing pattern of growth in relative incomes. I...