KEY ISSUES Context: Madagascar is one of the poorest countries in the world. Weak economic growth has contributed to persistent and increasing poverty with deteriorating social indicators. In a fragile environment, the uncertainty linked to political instability, weak institutions, and weak...

Satisfactory policy implementation continues in the program under challenging conditions, but the uncertain economic, social, and political environment will test this commitment. The program is flexible to accommodate a partial pass-through of higher world oil prices to domestic fuel prices and...

This paper reports on Bangladesh’s Financial System Stability Assessment. Considerable progress has been made in strengthening the resilience of the country's financial sector. Total assets of the banking sector have increased twofold since 2003, and credit to the private sector has risen...

This paper discusses key findings of the Sixth Review Under the Extended Credit Facility (ECF) for The Gambia. Recent performance under the ECF-supported program continued to be broadly satisfactory. All quantitative performance criteria for end-September 2009 were achieved, except for the...

We calculate indexes of central bank autonomy (CBA) for 163 central banks as of end-2003, and comparable indexes for a subgroup of 68 central banks as of the end of the 1980s. The results confirm strong improvements in both economic and political CBA over the past couple of decades, although...

This paper examines the current level of central bank independence (CBI) and transparency in a broad sample of countries using newly constructed measures, and looks at the evolution in both measures from an earlier time period. Increases in CBI have tended to occur in more democratic countries...

Despite growing interest among policymakers, there is no theory of independent fiscal institutions. The emerging literature on "fiscal councils" typically makes informal parallels with the theory of central bank independence, but a very simple formal example shows that such a shortcut is flawed....

This paper presents an update of the Grilli-Masciandaro-Tabellini (GMT) index of central bank (CB) autonomy, based on CB legislation as of end-2003. The index is applied to a set of OECD and developing countries, and emerging market economies. For a smaller set of countries, the paper presents a...