Post-HIPC growth dynamics inSub-Saharan Africa

Bayraktar, Nihal ; Fofack, Hippolyte

关键词: ADVANCED ECONOMIES;    ADVANCED TECHNOLOGY;    ADVERSE EFFECTS;    ADVERSE SHOCKS;    AGGREGATE DEMAND;   

DOI  :  10.1596/1813-9450-5924
RP-ID  :  WPS5924

学科分类：社会科学、人文和艺术（综合）

来源: World Bank Open Knowledge Repository

【 摘 要 】

Access to debt relief under the HighlyIndebted Poor Country Initiative enhanced the growthperformance across Sub-Saharan Africa, especially in thesubset of debt-ridden low-income countries. Over the pastfew years, these Completion Point countries have enjoyedsignificantly higher investments and growth rates, primarilyfueled by the expanding fiscal space of the post-HighlyIndebted Poor Country Initiative era. They are alsoweathering the adverse effects of the global crisis muchbetter than their non-Highly Indebted Poor CountryInitiative counterparts. Despite these growth rebounds, theregion is not likely to meet the Millennium DevelopmentGoals, however. Long-term growth projections from a simplemacroeconomic model, which is applied to Ethiopia, suggestthat prospects for reversing the widening income gaps withother regions of the developing world are limited. Under thebaseline scenario, assuming current growth trends, theestimates show that it could take more than five decades forper capita real income to double in Ethiopia. However, eventhese gloomy prospects are likely to be undermined by thelooming risk of another sovereign debt crisis. In effect,the experiments show that lowering interest rates onexternal debt would not bridge the widening income gap withother regions of the world, unless it is accompanied by arapid expansion of capital accumulation financed bysustained inflows of foreign aid.