Selected Issues Papers
IMF Selected Issues Papers are prepared by IMF staff as background documentation for periodic consultations with member countries.
2025
May 16, 2025
Strengthening Fiscal Data Governance in Solomon Islands
Description: Solomon Islands faces challenges in fiscal data governance despite reforms. While the Public Financial Management Act (PFMA) of 2013 aimed to enhance transparency, inconsistent implementation and resource constraints persist. This paper highlights key issues and recommendations, including adherence to public finance management good practices, enhanced and regularly disseminated financial reporting, and better utilization of the current Financial Management Information System. Strengthening coordination and capacity building is crucial for robust fiscal governance, fostering transparency and investor confidence. Addressing these challenges can enhance public finance management and long-term economic stability.
May 16, 2025
Enhancing Effectiveness of Solomon Islands' Fiscal Framework
Description: Solomon Islands faces the immediate fiscal challenges of rebuilding cash reserves, improving the quality of public spending, and imposing fiscal discipline on domestic borrowing. To address these challenges while financing necessary investments, it is an urgent priority to improve the effectiveness of the fiscal framework, in parallel with the efforts to strengthen basic public financial management (PFM) functions. Staff analysis indicates that the current debt ceiling of 35 percent of GDP remains broadly appropriate as a medium-term debt anchor. Given the weak PFM foundation and the absence of effective operational fiscal rules, staff proposes the introduction of a simple ex-ante guideline for annual budget formulation, as an interim measure. The proposed guideline sets a ceiling on the domestically financed primary budget deficit, to be consistent with a potential fiscal rule covering both domestic and external sources. The government should assess ex post whether the budget was implemented in line with the guideline and whether the fiscal outlook is consistent with the medium-term anchor.
May 15, 2025
Remittances to Samoa: A Safe Payment Corridor
Description: This paper provides a targeted analysis of ML/TF risks pertaining to remittances to Samoa, confirming limited risks, and discusses potential opportunities for streamlining applicable AML/CFT requirements to operationalize regional remittances risk assessments. Over the past decade, Samoa has been subject to de-risking, which has resulted in Correspondent Banking Relationship (CBR) withdrawals, CBR fragility and rising concentration risks, especially for money transfer operators (MTOs). The paper presents an analysis of authorities’ and the financial sector’s risk understanding and publicly available information on crime and the ML risk environment and concludes that there are limited ML/TF threats to the main remittance corridors to Samoa. Samoa’s ML/TF vulnerabilities - mostly related to capacity and resource constraints - are alleviated by the low ML/TF threat environment and regional information exchange and capacity building. Based on these findings, the paper provides an overview of potential regulatory and supervisory measures to promote a risk-based approach to CBRs to streamline the AML/CFT requirements for low-risk remittances to Samoa.
May 13, 2025
Governance and The Fight Against Corruption in Angola: Quid Vales? Quo Vadis?
Description: This paper reviews Angola’s recent reform efforts to strengthen good governance and fight corruption. Angola has achieved some progress on the governance and anti-corruption fronts since 2018, but the strong momentum observed through 2022 has abated. Gaps in most governance indicators remain sizeable and have started to widen in some cases. Closing these gaps is expected to deliver sizeable economic growth. While the legal framework is broadly appropriate, institutional autonomy, independence, and technical capacity to enforce this legal framework supported by the adoption of more transparent, publicly accessible, participatory, and digitally automated procedures have generally lagged.
May 13, 2025
Harnessing Angola’s Non-Oil Economic Growth: Economic Diversification in Angola
Description: Although Angola has made advances in its diversification efforts, the economy continues to be heavily dependent on crude oil with 94 percent of exports and 60 percent of fiscal revenues being attributable to oil activity. This paper discusses four policy areas which can help foster economic diversification in Angola’s specific context while boosting growth and resilience. The analysis shows that a well-designed package of reforms to (i) improve human capital, (ii) address critical infrastructure needs, (iii) foster a growth friendly business environment, and (iv) enhance access to credit can reduce structural barriers and market bottlenecks in support of Angola’s diversification.
May 9, 2025
Assessing Thailand’s Debt Ceiling—Room for Recalibration?
Description: The pandemic responses and subsequent fiscal stimulus measures have eroded Thailand’s fiscal space, pushing its public debt close to the ceiling of 70 percent of GDP. While this situation generally calls for fiscal prudence to reduce debt levels, it also raises questions about the adequacy of the current debt ceiling. This paper uses various approaches to assess Thailand’s public debt threshold, beyond which debt could become unsustainable or negatively impact growth. Stochastic simulations are used to account for potential impact of macroeconomic and fiscal shocks in calibrating an appropriate debt ceiling for Thailand.
May 9, 2025
Andorra: Income and Its Drivers in a Long-Term Perspective
Description: Income in Andorra has stagnated in the last 50 years. Starting from a very high level compared to peers, it has not grown as fast, as investment and productivity have lagged behind. In this study, we analyze the dynamics of income growth in Andorra from 1970 to today, comparing it to peer countries in Europe. We look at how peer countries successfully improved their income over time. Our findings suggest that investments in higher value-added sectors would be needed to keep the Andorran growth at potential and creating the right environment is key.
May 9, 2025
Improve Resource Allocation to Boost Growth in Greece
Description: The productivity growth of the Greek economy has stagnated since the 2010 European Debt Crisis. Despite reforms in product market regulations; their impact on productivity has been mixed. Firm-level data shows that resource misallocation worsened from 2009 to 2020; especially in non-tradable services and smaller firms. Although many firms have become more productive and new high-potential firms have emerged; their growth hasn't been sufficient to boost overall productivity. Accelerating regulatory reforms could enhance competition and improve business dynamism.
May 9, 2025
Enhancing Judicial System Efficiency in Greece: Drivers and Economic Impact
Description: Greece’s judicial system efficiency has been one of the lowest in the EU; affecting adversely the country’s economic performance. The massive increase in demand for judiciary services during the crisis period resulted from significant business and personal insolvencies; along with limited availability of alternative dispute resolutions and relatively low court fees. The response of judiciary services supply did not match the demand owing to inadequate deployment of human and financial resources and a low level of digitalization. Policy simulations suggest sizeable gains from judicial reforms for investment and productivity. Reducing the imbalances in the judicial system is important not only to address the legacy issues; but also to create conditions for higher growth going forward.
May 9, 2025
Fiscal Implications of Aging in Andorra: Pension and Healthcare System Reforms
Description: Andorra has the highest life expectancy and the lowest fertility rate in Europe, resulting in one of the fastest-aging populations on the continent. This study assesses the long-term fiscal implications of demographic change for Andorra’s pension and healthcare systems. Without reform, public pension and healthcare expenditures are expected to rise significantly by 2050. Comprehensive pension and healthcare reforms, alongside proactive immigration policies, are essential to mitigate demographic pressures and safeguard Andorra’s macroeconomic stability over the long term.