IMF names confused budgets, two other factors frustrating sub-Saharan economies
The International Monetary Fund (IMF) has come up with a bang saying economies of the sub-Saharan Africa need to get their budgets in order, diversify their economies and look after their poorest people in order to grow out of poverty and recession.
These were the three-pillared prescription from the IMF as expressed by one of its top Africa researchers, Celine Allard, in an official IMF blog post and podcast. Allard co-authored the Fund’s regional economic outlook.
In its regional economic outlook, the group said “if they do that, there is no reason why the region cannot have the strong growth needed to meet the aspirations of a young and growing population”.
Since 1999, there had never been any national budget that was executed close to 90 per cent and all of them had been fraught with budget deficit, meaning that they had never been in order as noted by the IMF.
The IMF outlook observed further that sub-Saharan economic growth hit only 1.4 percent last year, the lowest level in two decades and well off the five to six per cent rates normally reached.
Stressing that the development is well below the population growth rate, the report said “This is a quite broad-based deceleration because we see about two-thirds of the countries having slowed down last year, which is quite substantial”.
