Building a Fair and Inclusive Tax System in Asia
April 25, 2024
Mongolia: Public Investment Management Assessment Update
April 24, 2024
An IMF team found that Mongolia has made progress in public investment management since the 2016 PIMA. However, several challenges persist, and new issues are emerging. The team has identified five high-priority recommendations that could improve PIM processes and support the effective implementation of the government's investment aspirations.
Republic of Kazakhstan: Financial Sector Assessment Program-Technical Note on Regulation and Supervision of Crypto Assets
April 24, 2024
Kazakhstan saw a significant increase in crypto mining in 2021 following a ban on mining in China. Volatility in crypto markets and energy shortages, coupled with a prohibition on the circulation of crypto assets in Kazakhstan, reduced the size of the market by the following year. While retail and institutional crypto holdings are limited, growing public sector experiments with distributed ledger technology, a pilot project to allow the circulation of crypto in the Astana International Financial Centre (AIFC), and mandates for crypto miners to store a proportion of their mining rewards in AIFC registered exchanges has the potential to increase the size of the sector. If incentives grow for users and firms to circulate crypto, the existing prohibition – which has dampened market growth, could become untenable. Although not a regulatory priority, the broad prohibition on crypto assets should be replaced by a robust regulatory framework, contingent on market growth, upskilling supervisors, and a globally coordinated move to implementing conduct and prudential regulation.
Republic of Kazakhstan: Financial Sector Assessment Program-Technical Note on Climate-Related Risks and Financial Stability
April 24, 2024
Kazakhstan is vulnerable to transition risk due to the importance of its energy- and emissions-intensive sectors. Domestic and global climate policies would negatively affect Kazakhstan’s economy, its firms, industries, and banks, with heterogenous impacts across industries and banks. Using both micro and macro modeling approaches, the climate risk analysis suggests Kazakhstani banks are exposed to significant transition risk from domestic and, more importantly, global climate policies. The risk is especially higher for carbon intensive sectors, such as fossil fuel extraction, refining, and electricity generation. Banks with large exposure to emissions-intensive sectors experience up to 30 percent additional losses under a disorderly 1.5°C scenario over a 5-to-7-year horizon, compared to the baseline. Banks with a small share of portfolio with emissions-intensives sectors may still experience losses, as climate change mitigation actions affect the economy at large and the financial health of individual consumers, businesses, and industries.
IMF Launches New Regional Office in Saudi Arabia with a Joint Regional Conference on Industrial Policy for Diversification
April 23, 2024
Latin America's Shifting Demographics Could Undercut Growth
April 23, 2024
Fiscal Policies
April 22, 2024
| Fiscal Transparency
April 22, 2024
Fiscal transparency – the comprehensiveness, clarity, reliability, timeliness, and relevance of public reporting on the past, present, and future state of public finances – is critical for effective fiscal management and accountability. It helps ensure that governments have an accurate picture of their finances when making economic decisions, including of the costs and benefits of policy changes and potential risks to public finances. It also provides legislatures, markets, and citizens with the information they need to hold governments accountable. Greater fiscal transparency can also help strengthen the credibility of a country’s fiscal plans and can help underpin market confidence and market perceptions of fiscal solvency.
The Fiscal Transparency Code and Evaluation are the key elements of the IMF’s ongoing efforts to strengthen fiscal surveillance, policymaking, and accountability among its member countries.
Côte d’Ivoire: Request for an Arrangement Under the Resilience and Sustainability Facility-Press Release; Staff Report; and Statement by the Executive Director for Côte d’Ivoire
April 22, 2024
Côte d’Ivoire is highly exposed to climate change through rising temperatures
and sea levels as well as rain pattern changes. Economic vulnerabilities to climate
change are mostly due to the country’s heavy reliance on agriculture, and the
concentration of industrial and services activity in coastal areas. Agriculture employs
about half of the workforce and contributes about 17 percent of GDP and 10 percent of
tax revenues. At the same time, greenhouse gas emission and pollution in urban areas
are growing, albeit from a low level.
Botswana: Technical Assistance Report-Report on the Price Statistics Mission
April 22, 2024
The primary objective of the mission was to continue assisting Statistics Botswana with developing the producer price index (PPI). The report provides an overview of ongoing work to expand PPI coverage to include manufacturing and agriculture. Additionally, ongoing work to expand consumer price index coverage to include owner-occupied housing using the rental equivalence approach is also addressed.