{
  "title": "Beyond Growth: the Importance of Inclusion",
  "publication": "IMF Blog, July 7, 2011",
  "sourceUrl": "https://www.imf.org/en/blogs/articles/2011/07/07/beyond-growth-the-importance-of-inclusion",
  "canonical": "https://www.imf.org/en/blogs/articles/2011/07/07/beyond-growth-the-importance-of-inclusion",
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  "summary": "Author: Antoinette M. Sayeh",
  "sections": [
    {
      "heading": "Overview",
      "content": "- Author: Antoinette M. Sayeh\n- Publication date: July 7, 2011\n- Central question: While growth is necessary for poverty reduction and employment creation, is it sufficient to ensure that benefits accrue broadly across populations?"
    },
    {
      "heading": "Why inclusive growth matters",
      "content": "- Inclusive growth creates jobs and raises income, which:\n  - Advances social justice, peace, and political stability.\n  - Can start a virtuous growth circle: the poor spend most of additional income on basic needs, supporting demand, which fuels further income and profit growth.\n  - Larger-scale production and better health and nutrition improve worker productivity, reducing costs and increasing output.\n- Empirical suggestion: high income inequality, especially in low income countries, inhibits growth.\n- Link to development goals: progress on inclusion matters for progress toward the Millennium Development Goals by 2015."
    },
    {
      "heading": "Constraints that have limited the benefits of growth",
      "content": "- Resource-concentrated growth:\n  - Growth concentrated in natural resource sectors (mining, oil) tends to be capital intensive, creating little domestic employment.\n  - These sectors can be difficult to tax and often result in only a small share of profits being retained domestically and used to reduce poverty.\n- Persistent reliance on small-scale/subsistence agriculture:\n  - Majority of population in most African countries depends on small-scale or subsistence agriculture.\n  - Limited public infrastructure investment and limited access to financing have kept agricultural productivity low and households cash poor."
    },
    {
      "heading": "Country practices and policy examples toward more inclusive growth",
      "content": "- Policies to create jobs, increase productivity, and diversify activity:\n  - Mozambique: new poverty reduction action plan increases spending for job-creation in agriculture.\n  - Uganda: earmarked public savings to finance a new hydro-electric project.\n  - Tanzania: intensified efforts to eliminate red tape impeding private enterprise.\n  - Emphasis: public infrastructure (transportation, water, energy) and regulatory reforms.\n- Strengthening social safety nets:\n  - Ethiopia: cash and food transfer program that improved food security and retained livestock holdings.\n  - Rwanda: cash transfer and public works programs that reduced extreme poverty dramatically.\n  - Purpose: reduce income inequality and protect vulnerable people during economic downturns.\n- Managing natural resource revenues:\n  - Countries reviewing or changing tax regimes for natural resources to retain more profits domestically, including Democratic Republic of the Congo and Liberia.\n  - Simultaneous introduction of more transparent procedures to manage these resources."
    },
    {
      "heading": "IMF engagement and support",
      "content": "- Program and policy advice:\n  - Reinforce countries’ efforts to boost productivity and diversify production.\n  - Support processes to identify and select investment projects with widespread returns.\n  - Promote simple and transparent rules for starting businesses.\n- Technical assistance for natural resource management:\n  - Redesigning tax systems.\n  - Establishing sovereign wealth funds as special accounts to manage and safeguard monies until needed.\n  - Advising on rules for spending and mandatory public monitoring.\n- Social protection design and financing:\n  - Support for designing and financing social safety nets to provide social protection and create automatic stabilizers that rapidly expand government spending to contain impacts of economic shocks."
    },
    {
      "heading": "Outlook and priorities",
      "content": "- The IMF’s next Regional Economic Outlook for Africa will explore these questions in more depth (to be released in October of this year).\n- Near-term priority for many countries: establish economic stability and create conditions for robust economic growth.\n- For an increasing number of countries, the distribution of the benefits of growth has become a dominant policy agenda item as they strive to meet the Millennium Development Goals by 2015.\n\nSource: Beyond Growth: the Importance of Inclusion — Antoinette M. Sayeh, July 7, 2011\n\n---\n\n\n References\n\n- more spending on health and education\n- https://www.imf.org/wp-content/uploads/2011/07/slide26.jpg\n- https://www.imf.org/wp-content/uploads/2011/07/slide14.jpg\n\nSource: https://www.imf.org/en/blogs/articles/2011/07/07/beyond-growth-the-importance-of-inclusion"
    }
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    "Authors: Antoinette M Sayeh",
    "Published: July 7, 2011",
    "Author: Antoinette M. Sayeh",
    "Publication date: July 7, 2011",
    "Central question: While growth is necessary for poverty reduction and employment creation, is it sufficient to ensure that benefits accrue broadly across populations?",
    "Inclusive growth creates jobs and raises income, which:",
    "Empirical suggestion: high income inequality, especially in low income countries, inhibits growth.",
    "Link to development goals: progress on inclusion matters for progress toward the Millennium Development Goals by 2015.",
    "Resource-concentrated growth:",
    "Persistent reliance on small-scale/subsistence agriculture:",
    "Policies to create jobs, increase productivity, and diversify activity:",
    "Strengthening social safety nets:",
    "Managing natural resource revenues:",
    "Program and policy advice:",
    "Technical assistance for natural resource management:",
    "Social protection design and financing:",
    "The IMF’s next Regional Economic Outlook for Africa will explore these questions in more depth (to be released in October of this year).",
    "Near-term priority for many countries: establish economic stability and create conditions for robust economic growth.",
    "For an increasing number of countries, the distribution of the benefits of growth has become a dominant policy agenda item as they strive to meet the Millennium Development Goals by 2015.",
    "[more spending on health and education](http://blogs.imf.org/2010/09/20/making-up-for-lost-time-getting-back-on-track-to-the-millennium-development-goals/)",
    "[https://www.imf.org/wp-content/uploads/2011/07/slide26.jpg](https://www.imf.org/wp-content/uploads/2011/07/slide26.jpg)",
    "[https://www.imf.org/wp-content/uploads/2011/07/slide14.jpg](https://www.imf.org/wp-content/uploads/2011/07/slide14.jpg)"
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