Finance & Economics | WPN World People News

An IMF mission team led by Mr. John Nelmes visited Hanoi and Ho Chi Minh City April 6-22 to conduct the 2016 Article IV consultation discussions with Vietnam.

A new World Bank program will help Indonesia meet its growing energy needs and support economic growth, by bringing electricity to three million people in Sumatra island, an important economic hub for the Southeast Asian country.

Ways to unleash the full potential of the single market to the benefit of consumers, employees and businesses, in particular start-ups, are proposed in a report voted by Internal Market Committee MEPs on Thursday. Priorities include eliminating unjustified barriers to trade, helping SMEs and start-ups to scale up their activities, reforming VAT rules, developing legislative tools to foster the sharing economy and building a strong culture of compliance and enforcement.

Consumers should be given more power in the energy market, said Industry and Energy Committee MEPs on Thursday. They recommend schemes such as collective buying, home power generation by households, better price comparison tools for everyone and making it easier to switch energy providers and tariffs. In a non-binding resolution intended as an input to Energy Union legislation to be tabled by the EU Commission, MEPs also call for EU funds for energy efficiency to better focus on energy poverty.

How to protect unaccompanied minors and cooperate across borders to find missing children fast were the key issues in an emotional Civil Liberties Committee debate on Thursday about the fate of 10,000 refugee children who have gone missing in Europe.

On April 18-22 AFRITAC South, in collaboration with the Strategy, Policy and Review Department of the IMF and the Macroeconomic and Fiscal Management Global Practice of the World Bank, held a regional seminar on debt sustainability analysis for low income countries.

In a new push to catalyze growth in Sub-Saharan Africa’s agriculture and food sectors, Wednesday the Alliance for a Green Revolution in Africa (AGRA) and World Bank Agriculture Global Practice signed a letter of intent to strengthen cooperation, share information, and deepen collaboration including jointly developing a strategic portfolio of projects for greater impact.

The World Bank Board of Directors on Wednesday approved a US$ 200 million Program for Results operation to support Morocco’s preparedness to respond to natural disasters. The operation will reward the achievement of specific results in the way the government plans for and manages the risk of disasters, while also strengthening the country’s ability to cope with the costs of potential damages.

A team from the International Monetary Fund (IMF), led by Lisandro Abrego, held discussions with the Malian authorities during April 4–19 in Washington, D.C. on the fifth review of Mali’s economic and financial program supported by the IMF under the Extended Credit Facility (ECF).

The International Monetary Fund (IMF), the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), the United Nations (UN) and the World Bank Group (WBG) announced Tuesday the details of their joint effort to intensify their cooperation on tax issues: the Platform for Collaboration on Tax.