This Country Study provides an outline of a Strategy for Growth, Employment and Poverty Reduction in Uzbekistan. It recommends that the country seek to achieve a six per cent trend rate of economic growth based on increases in domestic public and private investment, instead of relying, as it...

This Selected Issues paper and Statistical Appendix reviews Mozambique’s impressive economic growth, its composition, and its impact on poverty reduction over the past decade. The paper highlights that improvements in total factor productivity, resulting from a stable macroeconomic...

This paper presents key findings of the Ex Post Assessment of Longer-Term Program Engagement for Bolivia. Bolivia is a country that is perceived as having one of the best structural reform records in Latin America but experienced sluggish per capita growth, and made virtually no progress in...

This paper presents the Completion Point Document for consideration of Rwanda’s Enhanced Initiative for Heavily Indebted Poor Countries. The government has maintained the policy of protecting social sector budget allocations from cuts during the course of the fiscal year, and military...

This Selected Issues paper reviews Bangladesh’s recent growth experience and per capita income. The paper identifies several key impediments to growth, namely: poor governance; restrictive trade and regulatory regimes; and inadequate investment in human capital and physical infrastructure....

This 2005 Article IV Consultation highlights that Guinea’s economic performance has deteriorated in recent years, largely as a result of a weak policy framework and against a background of mounting regional insecurity and low prices for its main commodity exports. Economic growth since...

In this paper we examine the mathematical relationship between growth and distributional change on absolute (i.e. percentage point) changes in FGT poverty measures assuming a log-normal income distribution, which we argue to be a conceptually superior and more policy-relevant measure than the...

This report analyzes the Comprehensive Poverty Reduction and Growth Strategy (CPRGS), the poverty reduction strategy paper of Vietnam. It evaluates the CPRGS in the international context and the national situation, economic growth in individual sectors, and social achievements in poverty...

This Joint Staff Advisory Note provides IMF staff advice on key priorities for strengthening Bangladesh’s poverty reduction strategy (PRS) and for ensuring its effective implementation. It highlights key strengths of the PRS while bringing out some weaknesses of existing policies that may...

This primer aims to provide IMF macroeconomists with the essential information they need to address issues concerning health sector policy, particularly when they have significant macroeconomic implications. Such issues can also affect equity and growth and are fundamental to any strategy of...