The staff report for the Sixth Review Under the Three-Year Arrangement Under the Poverty Reduction and Growth Facility on the Kyrgyz Republic highlights the economic developments and policies. To ensure that the external debt ratios fall, the program introduces a new indicative target for...

We look into Brazil's public sector accounts during the two administrations of President Fernando Henrique Cardoso: 1995-98 and 1998-2002. We underline the fact that the authorities' attitude was as important as the pace of the structural reforms for understanding the dynamics of the public...

Fiscal consolidation has become an important policy prescription for many emerging market countries (EMCs), particularly for the highly indebted ones. Although prudent fiscal policies tend to reduce vulnerabilities, their implementation is usually postponed. This paper represents, to the best of...

This paper on the Baltic countries analyzes medium-term fiscal issues related to European Union (EU) and NATO accession. The paper supports the Baltic authorities’ intention to aim at balancing their budgets over the economic cycle. The paper describes the Baltics’ current fiscal...

The staff report for the Sixth Review under the Stand-By Arrangement and Requests for Waiver of Performance Criteria on Bolivia highlights economic developments and preliminary macroeconomic framework. The economy is characterized by a number of vulnerabilities that require policy vigilance....

This Ex Post Assessment of Longer-Term Program Engagement for the Kyrgyz Republic explains macroeconomic and structural performance. External debt service claimed a steadily increasing share of fiscal revenues, but a strengthened commitment to prudent fiscal policies and improved policy capacity...

This paper reviews the Staff-Monitored Program (SMP) for the Union of the Comoros. The authorities’ program for 2005 is focused on macroeconomic stabilization. This is predicated on a consolidated budget entailing a domestic fiscal adjustment slightly above 3 percent of GDP. Monetary...

This paper discusses Bolivia’s Fifth Review Under the Stand-By Arrangement (SBA), Request for Waiver of Nonobservance of Performance Criteria (PC), and Rephasing, Augmentation, and Extension of the SBA. The 2004 program was on track. All quantitative PCs were met, with the exception of...

The fiscal position of the Eastern Caribbean Currency Union (ECCU) has deteriorated significantly in recent years, resulting in sharp increases in public debt. The sustainability of public debt is examined using the public sector budget constraint to derive the maximum public-debt-to-GDP ratio...

This paper examines the incidence of nonresident interest withholding taxes in the international 3-month Treasury-bill market and the international 5-year government bond market.The approach is one of pooled cross-section, time-series regressions.We find that, in general, U.S. dollar yields on...