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IMF Primary Commodity prices
May 6, 2024
Saint Lucia: Technical Assistance Report-Report on External Sector Statistics Mission
May 6, 2024
A technical assistance (TA) mission on external sector statistics (ESS) was conducted to the Central Statistics Office (CSO) of Saint Lucia as part of the Caribbean Regional Technical Assistance Centre (CARTAC) work program on ESS. The mission focused on addressing data compilation issues on trade in goods—especially on the import and re-export of fuel—and travel credits and assessed the revised 2022 balance of payments that was disseminated in December 2023.
IMF Staff Concludes Visit to Senegal
May 3, 2024
IMF Staff Reaches Staff Level Agreement with Armenia on the Third Review of the Stand-By Arrangement
May 3, 2024
IMF Staff Concludes Visit to Moldova
May 3, 2024
Kingdom of Eswatini: Financial Sector Stability Review
May 3, 2024
The IMF conducted a diagnostic review of the financial system of the Kingdom of Eswatini and proposed a Technical Assistance Roadmap to support the authorities’ detection of risks and vulnerabilities and to enhance capacity in financial sector oversight. The financial stability module focused on areas agreed with the country authorities: financial stability and systemic risk monitoring, macroprudential frameworks and tools; crisis management and financial safety net; and supervision and regulation of banks, nonbank deposit-taking institutions, insurance, and retirement funds. The financial sector statistics module focused on key gaps in monetary and financial statistics and financial soundness indicators that hamper financial stability analysis.
The Impact of Reduced Commuting on Labor Supply and Household Welfare: A Post-Pandemic Analysis
May 3, 2024
This paper examines the impact of changes in commuting time on welfare and labor supply in the aftermath of the COVID-19 pandemic. Utilizing data from the American Time Use Survey, we observe a shift in commuting time and working hours across occupations with varying ability of telework after the pandemic. We develop a household model of labor supply that accounts for commuting time, and we characterize how changes in commuting time impact individuals' and spouses' labor supply. We calibrate the model to the data. Our findings reveal that the observed post-pandemic decline in commuting time yields significant welfare gains: between 1.5 to 4.5 percent of consumption equivalents for households where at least one spouse experiences reduced commuting.
Challenges Facing SSNs in Emerging and Developing Economies:
May 3, 2024
We show how the standard social welfare framework can be used to assess the performance of social safety nets (SSNs) in terms of targeting efficiency and budget effort. We apply this framework to the World Bank’s ASPIRE database and find that the variation in poverty alleviation achieved by SSNs in emerging markets and developing economies (EMDEs) is driven mainly by variation in budget effort. Increasing transfer spending is therefore key to strengthening SSNs in EMDEs. However, the inability of many EMDEs to finely target transfers to poor households means the required spending increases are prohibitive over the short term, especially in low-income countries. This emphasizes the importance of enhancing targeting efficiency and we discuss how the use of proxy-means testing can contribute to this emphasizing the importance of careful design to manage the horizontal inequity inherent in such an approach to targeting.