Malaysia – Page 2

Multi-Track Monetary Policies in Advanced Economies: What This Means for Asia

IMFBlog2019-03-27T17:42:49-04:00April 27, 2015|

Since mid-2014, diversity and divergence—applying to countries’ economic situations, policies and performance—have dominated global economic discussions. Differing economic performance in major advanced countries has led to divergent monetary policies.

Both the Bank of Japan and the European Central Bank have started significant expansions of their balance sheets, while the U.S. Federal Reserve has ended its bond-buying program and is expected to start raising rates. This has had many effects, in particular, contributing to a sharp depreciation of the Yen and the Euro against the U.S. dollar (see chart 1).

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Oil Prices and Public Finances: A Double-Edged Sword

IMFBlog2019-03-27T17:57:18-04:00April 15, 2015|

By Benedict Clements and Marta Ruiz-Arranz

(Versions in 中文, Français, 日本語, Русский, عربي and Español)

Plunging oil prices have taken the public finances on an exciting ride the past six months. Oil prices have fallen about 45 percent since September (see April 2015 World Economic Outlook), putting a big dent in the revenues of oil exporters, while providing oil importers an unexpected windfall. How has the decline in oil prices affected the public finances, and how should oil importers and exporters adjust to this new state of affairs?

In the April 2015 Fiscal Monitor, we argue that the oil price decline provides a golden opportunity to initiate serious energy subsidy and taxation reforms that would lock in savings, improve the public finances and boost long-term economic growth.

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Time to Act on the G-20 Agenda: The Global Economy Will Thank You

IMFBlog2017-04-14T01:48:18-04:00February 6, 2015|

By Christine Lagarde

(Versions in 中文, Français, 日本語, Русский, Türk, and Español)

Implementation, investment, and inclusiveness: these three policy goals will dominate the G-20 agenda this year, including the first meeting of finance ministers and central bank governors in Istanbul next week. As Turkish Prime Minister Ahmet Davutoğlu recently put it: “Now is the time to act” – şimdi uygulama zamanı.

There is a lot at stake. Without action, we could see the global economic supertanker continuing to be stuck in the shallow waters of sub-par growth and meager job creation. This is why we need to focus on these three “I’s”:

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A Big Step Forward for Bolstering Financial Inclusion

IMFBlog2017-04-14T01:48:23-04:00January 28, 2015|

By David Marston, Era Dabla-Norris, and D. Filiz Unsal

(version in Español)

Economists are paying increasing attention to the link between financial inclusion—greater availability of and access to financial services—and economic development. In a new paper, we take a closer look at exactly how financial inclusion impacts a country’s economy and what policies are most effective in promoting it.

The new framework developed in this paper allows us to identify barriers to financial inclusion and see how lifting these barriers might affect a country’s output and level of inequality. Because the more you know about what stands in the way of financial inclusion, the better you can be at designing policies that help foster it.

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Portfolio Investment in Emerging Markets: More Than Just Ebb and Flow

IMFBlog2014-11-07T17:11:49-05:00November 7, 2014|

By Evan Papageorgiou

When the U.S. Federal Reserve first mentioned in 2013 the prospect of a cutback in its bond buying program, markets had a “taper tantrum.” Many emerging markets saw large increases in volatility, even though outflows from their domestic markets were small and short-lived. Now the Fed has ended its bond buying and is looking ahead to rate hikes, and portfolio flows continue to arrive at the shores of emerging market economies. So everything’s fine, right? Not quite.

In our latest Global Financial Stability Report, we show that the large concentration of advanced economy capital invested in emerging markets acts as a conduit of shocks from the former to the latter.

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When You Move, I Move: Increasing Synchronization Among Asia’s Economies

IMFBlog2017-04-14T02:01:47-04:00May 5, 2014|

By Romain Duval

(Version in 中文, and 日本語)

In recent decades, trade integration within Asia has increased more than in other regions. In valued-added terms, intraregional trade grew on average by over 10 percent a year from 1990 to 2012, twice the pace seen outside of Asia. Likewise, financial integration within the region has started to catch up, although it still lags behind trade integration. Concomitantly, business cycles in Asia have become steadily more synchronized over the past two decades, with the correlation between ASEAN economies’ growth rates almost reaching the very high levels seen within the Euro Area.

As outlined in the IMF Asia and Pacific Department’s latest Regional Economic Outlook, these facts are related. Namely, increases in trade and financial integration have strengthened the propagation of growth shocks between regional partners, leading Asian economies to move more in lockstep. One driver of this synchronization of business cycles has been the increase in size and connectedness of China’s economy. Looking ahead, we expect regional integration agenda and a bigger China to further increase spillovers and growth co-movement across the region. Greater international cooperation, […]

Public Finances Are on the Mend, but No Clean Bill of Health

IMFBlog2017-04-14T02:02:37-04:00April 9, 2014|

By Sanjeev Gupta and Martine Guerguil

(Version in Español Français, Русский, 中文, and 日本語)

We’ve had a spate of good news on the economic front recently. Does this mean that we are finally out of the fiscal woods? According to our most recent Fiscal Monitor report, not yet, as public debt remains high and the recovery uneven.

First, the good news. The average deficit in advanced economies has halved since the 2009 peak. The average debt ratio is stabilizing. Growth is strengthening in the United States and making a comeback in the euro area, and should benefit from the slower pace of consolidation this year. Emerging markets and developing countries have maintained their resilience, in part thanks to the policy buffers accumulated in the pre-crisis period. Talks of tapering in the United States have left a few of them shaken, but not (quite) stirred.

But there is still some way to go. The average debt ratio in advanced economies, although edging down, sits at historic peaks, and we project it will still remain above 100 percent of GDP by 2019 (Chart 1). The […]

Are Emerging Markets Still On the Receiving End?

IMFBlog2017-04-14T02:06:57-04:00April 3, 2014|

By Aseel Almansour, Aqib Aslam, John Bluedorn and Rupa Duttagupta

(Version in Español, Français, Русский, 中文 and 日本語)

The recent slowdown in emerging market growth is fueling a growing mania across markets and policy circles. Some worry that a large part of their stellar pace of growth over the 2000s (Figure 1) was due to a favorable external environment—cheap credit and high commodity prices. And, therefore, as advanced economies gather momentum now and begin to normalize their interest rates, and commodity price gains begin to reverse, emerging market growth could slip further.

Others instead contend that internal or domestic factors have played a role, with improved standards of governance and genuine structural reforms and robust policies, driving a fundamental transformation in the sources of emerging market growth towards a lower yet more sustainable trajectory.

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The Trillion Dollar Question: Who Owns Emerging Market Government Debt

IMFBlog2017-04-14T02:09:51-04:00March 5, 2014|

By Serkan Arslanalp and Takahiro Tsuda

(Version in Español, Français, Português, Русский, 中文 and 日本語)

There are a trillion reasons to care about who owns emerging market debt. That’s how much money global investors have poured into in these government bonds in recent years —$1 trillion. Who owns it, for how long and why it changes over time can shed light on the risks; a sudden reversal of money flowing out of a country can hurt. Shifts in the investor base also can have implications for a government’s borrowing costs.

What investors do next is a big question for emerging markets, and our new analysis takes some of the guesswork out of who owns your debt. The more you know your investors, the better you understand the potential risks and how to deal with them.

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Imagining If Key Foreign Banks Start Reducing Their Exposure in Asia

IMFBlog2017-04-15T14:07:15-04:00June 10, 2012|

Going forward, while the space for a macroeconomic policy response is smaller than it was entering the global financial crisis, Asia’s policymakers still have ample room to react appropriately to a sharp deleveraging of foreign banks arising from a euro area shock. In addition, capital adequacy ratios, which exceed regulatory norms in most economies, and low nonperforming loan ratios, combined with room to offer liquidity support, suggest that relatively healthy local banking systems should also provide a buffer, as they did in the wake of the global financial crisis.