Search

The global economy is undergoing a rapid digital transformation that is changing many conventional notions about our behavior and preferences. This includes the way in which we, as consumers, as businesses, or in interactions with government, seek out goods and services and pay for them or how we receive money from others or transfer it to family or friends. As the payments industry undergoes radical changes due to digital transformation, users, providers of payment services, and regulators are adapting to the new dynamics at varying paces. This note discusses the most significant innovations in payments and their key impacts and implications on users, banks and other payment service providers, regulators, and the overall structure of the payments market. The note places special emphasis on how emerging markets and developing economies (EMDEs) can reap the benefits of payment innovations in terms of costs, convenience, accessibility, and inclusion for individuals and firms, and allow them to leapfrog development of their payments markets and effectively support economic activity.

The Central African Economic and Monetary Community (CEMAC) authorities had been trying to set in motion a process to address the root cause of the region’s vulnerability - a largely undiversified economic basis overly dependent on oil. The CEMAC Commission had put in place a large-scale strategy of CEMAC economic and financial reform (PREF). This plan defines a set of reforms, organized around five pillars, to create the basis for more diversified, inclusive, private sector - led growth and enhanced governance of the public sector. Initial measures focused on engaging in closer financial relationships with the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and other development partners. As the first generation of IMF-supported programs are ending, and most CEMAC countries have benefited from the IMF’s sizable emergency financing to cope with the social and economic fallout of the COVID-19 crisis, the next step is to identify key reforms that will underpin second-generation programs to boost progress on the PREF and focus on addressing growth bottlenecks. This note responds to this need. It highlights a set of priority reforms at the national and regional levels that can guide the second generation of IMF programs and support the objective of putting CEMAC on a more sustained and inclusive path.

A joint IMF and World Bank team conducted virtual missions to Georgia during January-February 2021 and May-June 2021, to update the findings of the Financial Sector Assessment Program (FSAP) conducted in 2014. This report summarizes the main findings of the mission, identifies key financial sector vulnerabilities and developmental issues, and provides policy recommendations