Sub-Saharan Africa's growth performance during the past three years has been the best in more than three decades, and higher oil revenues and increased debt relief have been used to make progress toward the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs). Despite spending pressures, most countries have...

KEY ISSUES:Context. Strong area-wide economic performance in 2012 was largely driven by public investment financed by high oil revenues. GDP growth is expected to slow down in 2013 due to a decline in oil production, moderation in public investment and the political crisis in Central African...

Context: Mali is emerging from the worst security and political crisis in its recent history.Progress in political normalization to date has been encouraging: a successfulpresidential election, formation of the new government and the legislative elections havedemonstrated Mali's commitment to...

EXECUTIVE SUMMARYDonors have suspended some aid disbursements to Malawi in response to a scandalinvolving the theft of public funds. A group of public servants exploited weaknesses in thecontrol environment of the government's Integrated Financial Management Information System(IFMIS) to make...

In recent years, the IMF has released a growing number of reports and other documents covering economic and financial developments and trends in member countries. Each report, prepared by a staff team after discussions with government officials, is published at the option of the member country

This paper reviews Maliâ??s 2012â??2017 Poverty Reduction and Growth Strategy Paper. Maliâ??s GDP was CFAF 1,741.89 billion in 2012; real growth was ?1.2 percent, that is, excluding inflation (2.7 percent in 2011). The decline of 3.9 points in growth between 2011 and 2012 was finally stemmed,...

KEY ISSUESSetting: Swaziland has gradually recovered from the fiscal crisis of 2010-11, buoyed by the improved revenues from the Southern African Customs Union (SACU). Growth modestly recovered, and international reserves rebounded. Swaziland’s challenges, however, remain significant, in...

KEY ISSUESContext: Chad is a fragile country with weak institutional capacity that needs to manage volatile and exhaustible oil revenues prudently to tackle its large development needs.Chad is enjoying a period of domestic political stability, but major regional security issues are imposing...