Annex : country analysis by international organisations and regional development banks

Abstract

The purpose of this annex is to provide readers with an overview of the country analysis undertaken by international and regional organisations. It should assist readers in identifying the strengths and weaknesses of the various analyses and conduct a compare these analyses with the vulnerability and resilience profiling being proposed by the Commonwealth Secretariat. One of the strengths of the Commonwealth Secretariat's profiling exercise is that it is a framework focused on a particular category of countries small states, and has therefore been tailored to the special challenges faced by these countries - moving away from the one-size-fits-all assessments conducted by other organisations. The annex presents the work being undertaken by selected international organisations and regional development banks to assess the economic and social situation in countries. The focus is on: • the IMF's vulnerability indicators, Article IV and Financial Sector Assessment Program (FSAP), • the World Bank's reports such as the Country Economic Memorandum (CEM), Country Assistance Strategy (CAS) and Poverty Reduction Strategy Paper (PRSP), • the UN's Common Country Assessment (CCA), UNCTAD's vulnerability profiles and its Economic Vulnerability Index (EVI), • the WTO's Trade Policy Review Mechanism, • the EC' s Country Strategy Paper, • regional development banks, including the AfDB's Country Strategy Paper, as well as the IADB's Prevalent Vulnerability Index (PVI), country strategy and Country Program Evaluation (CPE). The annex outlines the purposes of the various country assessments that are prepared, the methodologies used to write these reports and the variables assessed. Most organisations focus on the economy, using widely available macro-economic data to assess how well an economy is doing. The general unavailability of environmental data means that only few environmental factors are considered and a small number of the organisations mainly the Commonwealth Secretariat, the World Bank and the UN consider environmental data in their assessment. Social data such as education and health indicators are considered by some organisations in their country assessment reports. However, the level of detail varies from organisation to organisation.