Belgium is facing higher structural deficits and rising debt after the pandemic and energy crisis. Fiscal consolidation is needed to lower inflation, rebuild buffers, reduce debt, and preserve Belgium's social contract. While designing an appropriate fiscal consolidation path involves...

Romania is on track to become 'fit for 55'-reducing its absolute emissions by 55 percent (relative to 1990) by 2030, consistent with the European Green Deal. However, becoming carbon-neutral by 2050 in an economically resilient and competitive manner would require an accelerated decarbonization...

Labor force particiaption (LFP) in Romania is-at 66.8 percent in 2022-significantly lower than the EU average, especially among women and less educated people. With a declining working-age population, rasing LFP could yield signifcant benefits including by boosting long-term growth, mitigating...

Tourism is an important driver of Dominica's economy. The damage of the pandemic on Dominica's tourism sector was severer than in most regional peers, and the recovery has also been much slower, mostly due to the timing of lockdown restrictions. This paper reviews the tourism sector landscape in...

Germany's macroprudential policy toolkit is well-developed, but its key missing piece is a set of instruments related to a borrower's income. In addition, existing powers to adopt LTV limits have not yet been deployed. Against this background, this paper advances the discussion of borrower-based...

The surge in energy prices since Russia's invasion of Ukraine has reduced the energy-intensive sector's production in Germany, although the non-energy intensive sector's production has held up thanks in part to firms' efforts to improve energy efficiency. Energy prices are expected to remain...

Nominal wage growth in Denmark has so far been modest and outpaced by high inflation, putting real wage growth in negative territory. Amid still-tight labor markets, this has raised concerns about wage pressures going forward and the eventual impact on inflation. The analysis suggests that wage...

Stock-flow adjustments-extra-budgetary and below-the-line operations that do not reflect standard spending and revenue-have added 9 percentage points to the debt-to-GDP ratio in Mali over the past decade. That is just under a third of the total increase in public debt over that period. Despite...

This SIP provides an overview of the governance diagnostic mission conducted in early 2021 by experts from the IMF's Fiscal Affairs and Legal Departments, along three main pillars - the rule of law, tax and customs administration, and public financial management. The SIP assesses progress made,...

Mali's wage bill has soared to levels not seen since the early 1990s. This may cause considerable opportunity costs-limiting fiscal space and potentially adding to inflationary pressures-as well as adversely affect medium-term debt sustainability as it weighs heavily on the primary deficit. This...