Measuring Financial Development in Sub-Saharan Africa

Enrique Gelbard and Sérgio Leite

No 1999/105, IMF Working Papers from International Monetary Fund

Abstract: This study introduces an index for measuring financial development and a set of six indices representing key characteristics of the financial systems in 38 sub-Saharan African countries. The results show that these countries have made good progress in improving and modernizing their financial systems during the last decade, particularly with regard to financial liberalization and the adoption of indirect instruments of monetary policy. In many countries, however, the range of financial products remains extremely limited, interest rate spreads are wide, capital adequacy ratios are insufficient, judicial loan recovery is a problem, and the share of nonperforming loans is large.

Keywords: WP; financial system; index; market structure index; monetary policy; financial development; measurement; Africa; market structure; financial products Index; liberalization index; instruments Index; liberalization Index; Financial sector development; Monetary policy instruments; Commercial banks; Bank credit; Credit; Sub-Saharan Africa (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 28
Date: 1999-08-01
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (26)

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.imf.org/external/pubs/cat/longres.aspx?sk=3245 (application/pdf)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:imf:imfwpa:1999/105

Ordering information: This working paper can be ordered from
http://www.imf.org/external/pubs/pubs/ord_info.htm

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in IMF Working Papers from International Monetary Fund International Monetary Fund, Washington, DC USA. Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Akshay Modi (amodi@imf.org).