Russia's invasion of Ukraine continues to have a devastating social and economic impact on the country. Civilian casualties are mounting, over a third of the population has been displaced, and access to basic needs such as electricity, water, and heating are at risk while winter is coming....

The repercussions of the war in Ukraine are threatening economic and social stability. Following a slight uptick in July-August, new COVID-19 cases have declined to almost nil recently while the vaccination rate remains low at around 22 percent of the population. The Gambia is also suffering...

In the wake of the Covid pandemic, Serbia embarked on a well-paced consolidation path to rebuild buffers, supported by a program under the Policy Coordination Instrument (PCI). Given higher energy prices and domestic electricity production problems, high global inflation, weaker trading partner...

On July 8, 2022, the IMF Executive Board approved 42-month Extended Fund Facility (EFF) and Extended Credit Facility (ECF) arrangements under High Combined Credit Exposure (HCCE) (391 percent of quota, about US$650 million) to help Benin meet pressing financing needs and support the country's...

Kenya is navigating a turbulent global backdrop marked by volatile commodity prices, slowing growth in key trading partners, and constrained frontier market access to international capital markets. At home, a smooth transition following the August elections demonstrated Kenya's increasing...

Supported by a large policy package, Rwanda's economy rebounded in 2021 after contracting in the preceding year due to the COVID-19 shock. However, the country now faces multi-faceted challenges-pandemic scars, headwinds from the war in Ukraine, and climate-related shocks, meanwhile inflationary...

We construct a high-frequency dataset that combines information on all IMF lending and proxies of monthly economic activity during the first two years of the COVID-19 pandemic (2020-21). Using this novel dataset and standard econometric techniques we find a positive and significant marginal...

Economic recovery is ongoing. Real GDP is expected to expand by 2.7 percent in 2022, slightly lower than expected in the last review due to the protests-related disruptions in June and slower growth in trading partners. Inflationary pressures have risen, driven by higher food and transport...

The paper documents the benefits provided by IMF's precautionary instruments (FCL and PLL) to countries in accessing international financial markets. It builds on multiple methods to show that the announcement of new FCL or PLL generally leads to a significant decline in sovereign spreads. Next,...

Despite a series of economic shocks, Barbados has made good progress in implementing its Economic Recovery and Transformation (BERT) plan since the government led by Prime Minister Mia Mottley took office in May 2018. Macroeconomic stability was restored with a combination of comprehensive...