Gabon continues to enjoy record high oil prices, buoying both exports and government revenues. The critical medium-term challenge facing Gabon is managing the transition from an economy highly dependent on oil to a diversified economy that harnesses private sector initiative, and makes decisive...

This Selected Issues paper on The Federal Democratic Republic of Ethiopia highlights that accelerating private sector development is the key to increasing and sustaining growth, and providing employment opportunities to raise incomes. Private sector development remains in its infancy, reflecting...

This 2005 Article IV Consultation for the Netherlands Antilles’ reports that economic growth has been feeble so far in this decade, in the midst of economic policy drift. Growth has been constrained by still inflexible labor markets, widespread state ownership and interference in...

This paper analyzes the 2005 Article IV Consultation and First Review Under the Staff-Monitored Program (SMP) for the Union of the Comoros. Economic growth remained lackluster in 2004 owing to a depressed world demand for vanilla and crop, and cattle diseases. Government revenue stagnated, while...

Iraq’s 2005 Article IV Consultation reports that there has been a marked deterioration in Iraq’s human development indicators over the last twenty years. There is relatively little firm data on the balance of payments other than on oil exports, government imports of goods and...

This 2004 Article IV Consultation for Panama reports that the medium-term outlook is encouraging, assuming implementation of the authorities’ fiscal program, which should put the public debt ratio on a steadily declining path. The banking system experienced a substantial recovery in...

This report presents update on the Observance of Standards and Codes—Data and Fiscal Transparency Modules for Hungary. Hungary continues to observe the Special Data Dissemination Standards’ specifications for the coverage, periodicity, and timeliness of all data categories,...

This 2005 Article IV Consultation highlights that The Gambia’s economic performance since the mid-1980s has been uneven owing to exogenous shocks, macroeconomic and structural policy slippage, poor governance, and weak institutions. The economic performance has been constrained by policy...

After widening substantially in the period preceding the global financial crisis, current account imbalances across the world have contracted to a significant extent. This paper analyzes the factors underlying this process of external adjustment. It finds that countries whose pre-crisis current...