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IMF Staff Completes Article IV Mission to Colombia
August 1, 2025
Domestic Revenue Mobilization in Guinea-Bissau
August 1, 2025
This paper quantifies Guinea-Bissau’s tax potential using a stochastic frontier model and investigates the underlying sources of untapped revenue. Beyond benchmarking performance against structural peers, it tackles the complex drivers of low revenue mobilization, including high informality, administrative inefficiencies, a fragmented tax system, and weak enforcement. The analysis distinguishes between structural constraints and policy or institutional gaps, offering a nuanced diagnosis of where reforms can yield the greatest returns. It finds that Guinea-Bissau has significant scope to increase domestic revenue by broadening the tax base, enhancing compliance, and strengthening core tax functions. Targeted, sequenced reforms in administration and policy could help close the tax gap and support more sustainable, resilient public finances.
Bolstering Social Protection and Human Capital to Promote Inclusive Growth: Guinea-Bissau
August 1, 2025
Guinea-Bissau’s social sectors face persistent challenges despite the progress made over the past few years. This paper reviews existing social protection programs in the country, assesses the efficiency and adequacy of public spending, and formulates recommendations to enhance value for money in social spending. Government spending on education and social protection has been low compared to regional peers, which partly reflects weak domestic revenue mobilization and volatile donor support. However, total health spending has been relatively high due to large private out-of-pocket payments. The much-needed expansion of health and education services to cover a larger segment of the population is expected to generate significant structural fiscal pressures. Regarding social protection, the analysis shows that Guinea-Bissau would benefit from implementing ambitious and well-targeted social programs and moving away from untargeted subsidies.
Canada: Financial System Stability Assessment-Press Release and Staff Report
August 1, 2025
Canada has a large and highly developed financial system. The banking sector
is very concentrated, with six Domestic Systemically Important Banks (D-SIBs) accounting
for 94 percent of banks’ assets. The nonbank financial institution (NBFI) sector is large
and mainly composed of mutual and pension funds, and insurance firms. The financial
sector oversight structure is complex, involving both federal and provincial agencies. The
Financial Sector Assessment Program (FSAP) takes place against the backdrop of weak
economic growth, increasing trade tariffs, and heightened geoeconomic risks.
Cameroon: Eighth Reviews Under the Extended Arrangement Under the Extended Fund Facility and the Arrangement Under the Extended Credit Facility, and Third Review Under the Resilience and Sustainability Facility Arrangement-Press Release; Staff Report; and Statement by the Executive Director for Cameroon
August 1, 2025
Cameroon is a fragile and conflict-affected state with significant vulnerability to
climate change. Growth remained modest amid a challenging external environment, a
slow pace of reforms, and the composition of fiscal adjustment, while macroeconomic
stability was maintained. The reduction in foreign development assistance threatens to
further weaken the social safety net, exacerbating existing social vulnerabilities.
Meanwhile, the Presidential election in October 2025 introduces political and economic
uncertainty, compounding challenges in an already unfavorable external environment.
Argentina: First Review Under the Extended Arrangement Under the Extended Fund Facility, Requests for a Waiver of Nonobservance of a Performance Criterion, Rephasing of Access, Modification of Performance Criteria, and Financing Assurances Review-Press Release; Staff Report; and Statement by the Executive Director for Argentina
August 1, 2025
The new Fund-supported program has had a strong start.
Appropriately tight fiscal and monetary policies have underpinned the smooth transition
toward a more flexible exchange rate regime and the easing of most foreign exchange
(FX) restrictions. Inflation and inflation expectations are firmly on a downward trajectory,
the exchange rate has fluctuated around the midpoint of a widening band, and the gaps
between the official and parallel exchange rates have largely been eliminated. Economic
activity remains generally resilient, supporting a further reduction in poverty. Notably,
Argentina has re-entered international capital markets well ahead of the timeline
anticipated at the program’s approval. That said, reserve buffers are taking longer to
rebuild, amid a widening of the current account deficit, given strong domestic demand
and a sharp easing of import restrictions.
Republic of Congo: Technical Assistance Report-Assessment and Reform of Petroleum Product Subsidies
August 1, 2025
This capacity development (CD) report assesses the fiscal implications of fuel subsidies in the Republic of Congo and proposes actionable measures to sustainably reduce their large and negative footprint on the country’s public finances. With an estimated cost of 4.5 percent of gross domestic product (GDP) in 2022 and 2.5 percent of GDP in 2023, fuel subsidy spending is higher than public expenditure on health (2.3 percent of GDP) and comparable to that on education (3.6 percent of GDP). The majority of fuel price subsidies do not directly benefit Congolese households but rather businesses with high consumption of diesel and aviation fuel. In addition to consumer subsidies, public companies of the downstream fuel sector benefit from direct subsidies estimated at over 2 percent of GDP per year on average between 2018 and 2023. Against this background, short- and medium-term measures can be taken to reach three objectives: i) rapidly reduce subsidy expenditures by focusing first on closing price gaps for large consumers while temporarily shielding households from large price increases, ii) effectively increase tax revenues from fuel consumption, and iii) strengthen the downstream fuel sector governance and strategic planning.
Republic of Azerbaijan: Technical Assistance Report-Report on National Accounts Mission; February 17 – 28, 2025
August 1, 2025
A technical assistance mission assisted the State Statistical Committee of Azerbaijan (SSC) in developing the system of quarterly national accounts. It did so by reviewing the compilation of quarterly GDP by production and providing recommendations for further improvement. The mission also reviewed the compilation of quarterly GDP by expenditure and made recommendations to develop the chain-linked time series of gross fixed capital formation. These improvements to data and methods will improve the understanding of the Azerbaijan economy, both for domestic policymaking and international surveillance.
Ramsey-Optimal Fiscal Spending and Reserve Accumulation Policies under Volatile Aid
August 1, 2025
This paper examines Ramsey-optimal policies related to fiscal spending and international reserve accumulation in response to volatile aid flows in Low-Income Countries (LICs). We develop a real Dynamic Stochastic General Equilibrium (DSGE) model of a small open economy, incorporating government transfers and public investment as fiscal spending components, along with two prominent characteristics of LICs: Dutch disease (DD) externalities and financially constrained households. Driven by considerations of precautionary saving, Ramsey-optimal policies involve partial reserve accumulation and partial fiscal spending of aid. Stronger DD externalities necessitate greater reserve ac- cumulation to stabilize future output, thereby mitigating consumption volatility. While transfers directly support private consumption smoothing, public investment also con- tributes to this goal by sustaining future income through gradual capital accumulation. Higher aid volatility calls for increased public investment, underscoring the role of public capital accumulation as a precautionary saving instrument, beyond its developmental role discussed in the literature.