Shockwatch Bulletin: Global Monetary Shocks - Impacts and Policy Responses in Sub-Saharan Africa.

摘要

A different and more intense financial integration of sub-Saharan countries into the global economy has been apparent since 2009. This brings new opportunities as well as new risks. This Bulletin examines how global monetary shocks in 2013 affected a range of emerging and sub-Saharan African (SSA) countries, and analyses potential policy issues in responding to these, including the potential role of exchange rate policy as one of a range of policies that African countries can use to respond to global monetary shocks. Five years of unconventional monetary policies in developed countries to address the impact of the global financial crisis led to increased capital flows to developing countries as investors searched for yields as developed countries’ interest rates were kept at historic lows. The potential for the unwinding of these unconventional policies caused global instability from May 2013, especially in emerging economies such as India (initially), Indonesia, South Africa, Turkey and Brazil. Less is known about the impacts of global monetary shocks on SSA. A typical view of SSA is that it is not financially integrated, that the global financial crises of 2008–9 affected African countries only through the real sector, and hence that global monetary conditions have no direct effects on SSA. However, this Bulletin (and our previous work) confirms that African countries did indeed benefit from monetary easing in developed countries, but that as such quantitative easing (QE) is rolled back they are likely to suffer some less benign consequences. They will find it more difficult to attract investors for their sovereign bonds as more developed country investors find higher yields in their own countries and the costs for African governments are likely to go up. This Bulletin first provides a macro-economic update on selected key variables such as gross domestic product (GDP), trade, current account and government balances, and vulnerability, but also on private capital flows. SSA GDP grew at 4.2% in 2012 and is estimated to have accelerated to around 5% in 2013 and is expected to grow by 5.5% in 2014. Foreign direct investment (FDI) is estimated to have risen by between 10 and 20% in SSA in 2013, to around US$40 billion. Bank lending (outstanding) to SSA declined by some 5% to just over US$135 billion by the middle of 2013. Sovereign bond issuances in SSA (excluding South Africa) increased rapidly in 2013 (more than doubling from US$1.7 billion in 2012 to US$4.6 billion in 2013). SSA countries have issued US$10 billion-worth in sovereign bonds since 2007, with a marked upturn in 2013. Together, this suggests that SSA is much more financially integrated today than a decade ago, and much more reliant on short-term bond and equity inflows than even 3–4 years ago. While many low-income countries (LICs) remain vulnerable to global macroeconomic shocks, progress in rebuilding policy buffers in those in SSA has increased the number of countries expected to be resilient, approaching pre-crisis levels. A number of macro-economic indicators for African LICs indicate improving growth rates, lower government deficits, and that the current account balance is under control, although reserves expressed as number of months’ imports have declined. But these are small improvements overall.