This paper on Benin highlights poverty reduction and growth strategy. The National Development Plan (PND) is designed to specify the strategic benchmarks for development activities for the eight-year period until 2025, the target date for the implementation and completion of the Vision. The...

Reliable national accounts are essential for proper economic analyses and informed policymaking by national authorities as well as other stakeholders. Nevertheless, in many countries, national accounts statistics are subject to serious shortcomings, which are often manifested as overestimated...

This paper studies how output fluctuations in Russia are transmitted internationally. Using vector autoregression (VAR) and dynamic panel models, the paper finds that Russia's output fluctuations are an important driver of output fluctuations of countries in the region, especially for oil...

On the occasion of the World Bank-IMF Annual Meetings' return to the African continent after 50 years-specifically to Marrakech, Morocco-this Special Issue on Africa discusses economic developments for the entire continent. After four years of crises and at the close of another difficult year,...

After a stronger-than-expected recovery from the pandemic and continued resilience in early 2023, economic growth in Latin America and the Caribbean (LAC) is softening as the effect of tighter policies to combat inflation is taking hold and the external environment is weakening. The early and...

This Selected Issues paper discusses reforming the state-owned enterprises (SOE) sector in Botswana. The authorities are committed to diversifying the economy and growing the relative size of the private sector but, until now, progress has been limited. Compared to other emerging markets, SOEs...

Tourism is an important driver of Dominica's economy. The damage of the pandemic on Dominica's tourism sector was severer than in most regional peers, and the recovery has also been much slower, mostly due to the timing of lockdown restrictions. This paper reviews the tourism sector landscape in...

This Selected Issues paper focuses on decomposing the public-private sector wage differential in Lesotho. Lesotho's public wage bill is significantly higher than in other countries in the region. This paper takes a closer look at the civil service wage bill and examines public sector wage...

Low-income economies face negative shocks whose frequency and disproportionate impact overcome growth trajectories, producing a negative drift. COVID-19 was the latest such episode. To escape this negative drift, and build a durable recovery, there is a need for a counter-balancing force: to...

This paper proposes to postpone the next review of the PRGT interest rate structure to end-July 2025, given the desirability to consider all policies regarding low-income country facilities-including those related to PRGT interest rates-at once in the context of 2024/25 Review of the Fund's...