By: Nyima Sillah
The International Monetary Fund (IMF) in Collaboration with The Ministry of Finance and Economic Affairs, Wednesday organise an outreach forum to present the October 2019 the regional economic outlook for sub Saharan Africa (REOS-SA) at local hotel.
The event was held under the theme “Navigating Uncertainties”, discusses the economic outlook for the sub Saharan Africa region, the key challenges confronting the region’s policymakers and provides policy recommendations.
Speaking at the forum, Mr Mod Secka Permanent Sectary Ministry of Finance and Economic Affairs, said70 the flagship publication by the international monetary fund staff in the Africa department continues to provide valuable insight to government authorities and most importantly, policy makers across Africa on important issues confronting the economies and content as a whole.
According to him, the main objective of the policymakers is to transform the vision of government into concrete policies that would touch the livers of the people.
He pointed out that, the report provides them the opportunity to navigate uncertainties amidst global slowdown steaming from trade tensions, increasing debt vulnerabilities, climatic and security challenges.
Mamadou Barry IMF The Gambia representative, presented on the sub Saharan Africa economic outlook-navigating uncertainty.
He said, since the 2014-15 term of trade shock, sub Saharan Africa growth is bifurcated with the non-resource intensive countries outpacing the resource-rich countries.
He pointed out that, in per capital term, 25 countries will continue to coverage toward the world average Gross Domestic product but another 20 countries will lag behind.
“Job creation will need to double in the next 10years”, he said.
He explained that, despite lowering interest rates in many countries, private sector credit grow has been slow due to worsening bank asset quality, large public borrowing and regulatory changes such as the alignment to base I II /III.
Bernard Mendy, Economist at International Monetary Fund The Gambia office in his presentation on the domestic arrears in sub Saharan Africa said most sub Saharan Africa countries officially report expenditure arrears but also have “unrecognized’’ arrears after declining in the late 2000s, noting that arrears have increase recently.
“Country authorities should make every effort to clear existing arrears and prevent arrears accumulation”, he said.
He also explained that, challenges relating to domestic arrears in the Gambia and sub Saharan Africa, are the absence of standardize definition and coverage of public sector and no existing database on domestic arrears.
