Selected Issues Papers
IMF Selected Issues Papers are prepared by IMF staff as background documentation for periodic consultations with member countries.
2025
June 10, 2025
New Zealand's Productivity Challenge: New Zealand
Description: Weak productivity growth continues to pose a challenge for New Zealand’s long-term economic prospects. Hindered by a remote geography and large agriculture and tourism sectors, slow aggregate productivity growth also reflects costs and incentives for investment and innovation, features of the business environment, and availability of financing options. Young, high growth firms appear to face financing challenges, while competition, innovation, and technological diffusion are low across sectors. The current juncture, with a nascent economic recovery underway, presents an opportunity for a multi-pronged reform agenda to address this productivity challenge.
June 6, 2025
Unleashing the Benefits of Intra-African Trade Integration for the WAEMU: WAEMU
Description: WAEMU members’ trade openness, integration into global value chains (GVCs), and export diversification remain limited. Tariffs, non-tariff measures (NTMs, obstacles to trade that arise mainly from differences in national regulations), and a challenging trade environment (e.g., cumbersome Customs and border processes) hamper WAEMU members’ trade with countries outside of ECOWAS; while NTMs and the challenging trade environment weigh on trade even among WAEMU members and on trade between WAEMU members and other ECOWAS countries. WAEMU members should pursue greater trade integration by helping move AfCFTA discussions forward and implementing agreed steps. They should also advocate with AfCFTA partners for a more ambitious process for removing NTMs. In parallel, they should drive forward trade integration among themselves, including by addressing NTMs and seeking to strengthen the trade environment in a cost-effective manner, e.g., by streamlining Customs and border processes.
June 6, 2025
Food Security in WAEMU: Current Challenges and a Way Forward
Description: Food insecurity in WAEMU has worsened over the last few years—mainly due to conflicts, climate, and affordability issues—with the Sahel zone being in a particularly difficult situation. The security environment is complex, while the region is also highly vulnerable to climate change and dependent on food imports. If left unaddressed, food insecurity could have a lasting adverse impact on economic growth and development. Addressing food insecurity in a durable way requires solidarity, as well as well-targeted and coordinated efforts by national and regional authorities, in collaboration with partners.
June 6, 2025
Model-Driven Macrofinancial Policy Analysis in the WAEMU: WAEMU
Description: This quantitative model for Macrofinancial Policy Analysis for the WAEMU was developed to deepen the Fund’s engagement in macrofinancial surveillance in the region. By analyzing unobserved credit cycle dynamics and risks, and emphasizing macrofinancial linkages, the model helps assess the consistency between real and credit cycles, build alternative scenarios, offers medium-term macroeconomic projections, and support macrofinancial policy analysis.
June 6, 2025
Education in the WAEMU: Current Situation and the Way Forward
Description: This paper makes the case for prioritizing the education sector in the West African Economic and Monetary Union (WAEMU) by taking stock of the outcomes and documenting its macroeconomic relevance. Education outcomes across the WAEMU region remain relatively weak, while empirical estimates indicate that improvements could lead to large income gains. Given a young population and high fertility rate, ramping up the progress in education remains critical, including by exploring options to enhance quality, safeguarding related spending, closing gender gaps, and improving the resilience of the education systems to climate and health shocks. Beyond national efforts, regional coordination and cooperation have a crucial role in achieving better education outcomes.
May 30, 2025
Property Insurance Challenges in the ECCU: ECCU
Description: Property insurance affordability presents a growing challenge for the ECCU. With a high reliance on global reinsurance to manage risks in high-exposure products like property, the recent tightening of global reinsurance market conditions has largely passed through to local premiums and constrained capacity to extend coverage. The rising costs exacerbate the already acute non-and under-insurance challenges in the region. These can worsen the economic and fiscal impacts of natural disasters and, if further exacerbated, raise broader macro-financial stability risks by weakening asset quality and credit conditions. Enhancing the ECCU’S readiness to manage these risks calls for concerted efforts to strengthen insurance data collection, risk analysis, and regional supervision. These would inform the appropriate design and calibration of policies to help close protection gaps, contain future market pressures, and mitigate broader financial system risks.
May 30, 2025
ECCU CBI Programs: Regional Significance and Risks
Description: The Citizenship-by-Investment Programs (CBI) have long been recognized in their importance to fiscal revenue in the ECCU, but there is less clarity over their broader economic contributions. At the same time, investor demand in this market can be highly unpredictable, especially as the programs have come under increased international scrutiny. This paper takes stock of recent CBI developments in the ECCU and estimates that total investments under these programs far outweigh those directly contributing to government revenue. This underscores the need for ongoing regional efforts to reduce the CBI programs’ risk susceptibility as well as to strengthen management of residual risks, including through: (i) clearer provisions for CBI revenues’ budget use to mitigate fiscal risks; and (ii) enhanced transparency standards and ex-post assessments of CBI projects to inform regional best practices, assessments of the program’s systemic significance, and development of contingency plans.
May 30, 2025
Fiscal Sustainability and Natural Disaster Risks in the ECCU: ECCU
Description: ECCU countries are highly vulnerable to recurring and increasingly severe natural disasters. Evidence suggests that severe natural disaster have negative impacts on fiscal balances and debt in the region. This underscores the need for comprehensive disaster resilience strategies to mitigate immediate economic losses, finance post-disaster needs, and safeguard fiscal sustainability.
May 26, 2025
Powering the Future: Energy Transition Strategies for the ECCU
Description: Reducing energy dependence in the ECCU entails improving energy efficiency and shifting from fossil fuels to renewable energy. This energy transition will affect the transmission of and vulnerability to shocks (e.g., from natural disasters or commodity markets) while at the same time helping to reduce economic imbalances and enhance growth potential. Policymakers need to establish frameworks to maximize the benefits of the energy transition, while ensuring it is sustainable and equitable.
May 23, 2025
Impact of International Shocks on North Macedonia and the Western Balkans: Republic of North Macedonia
Description: The Western Balkan economies have faced numerous external shocks in recent years, while simultaneously becoming more integrated with the European Union. This paper employs a global vector autoregressive (GVAR) model to estimate the spillovers of real, financial, monetary, and global commodity price shocks across all countries in the region. The findings reveal that real shocks from the euro area significantly impact economic activity and trade. Financial shocks' effects are moderated by the level of financial depth and integration. Both conventional and unconventional monetary policy shocks influence economic activity and inflation, depending on the degree of monetary autonomy. Additionally, global energy commodity price shocks are identified as major drivers of inflation. North Macedonia in particular experiences the most substantial spillovers through industrial activity and trade, due to its high integration into European global value chains.