Louis Kasekende (The Jerome Levy Economics Institute) Damoni Kitabire (The Jerome Levy Economics Institute) Matthew Martin (The Jerome Levy Economics Institute)
Abstract
Little has been written about capital flows to sub-Saharan Africa (SSA), largely because of the flows' small size and data limitations. In this working paper, Louis Kasekende, executive director for policy and research at the Bank of Uganda; Damoni Kitabire, commissioner for the Macroeconomic Policy Department for the Ministry of Finance and Economic Planning in Kampala; and Matthew Martin, director of external finance for Africa, explore these inflows, noting that although they are small compared to those into other countries, they are in proportion to the size of the recipient economies. The authors examine the scale and composition of capital inflows, their causes and sustainability, their effect on macroeconomic stability, and their responsiveness to policy measures for six SSA nations: Kenya, South Africa, Tanzania, Uganda, Zambia, and Zimbabwe. Exhibit 5 shows the change in the composition of private capital flows to SSA nations. Most of the changes are in the same direction as in other developing regions, but the magnitude of the changes in other regions is generally greater than in SSA countries. The absolute size of these changes are, however, still small. For example, portfolio investment was no more than U.S.$120 million per year and foreign direct investment was around U.S.$1.6 billion during the period 1990 to 1993, with foreign direct investment lower in real terms than in the early 1980s. Overall, SSA inflow trends were similar to those in other small countries, with short-term bank loans and foreign direct investment playing a greater role than medium- to long-term loans and portfolio inflows. Kasekende, Kitabire, and Martin identify a number of determinants of recent capital inflows, which they classify as push (external) or pull (internal) factors.
Download Info
To download:
If you experience problems downloading a file, check if you have the
proper application to
view it first. Information about this may be contained
in the File-Format links below. In case of further problems read
the IDEAS help
page. Note that these files are not on the IDEAS
site. Please be patient as the files may be large.
Publisher Info
Paper provided by EconWPA in its series Macroeconomics with number
9809005.
Length: 43 pages Date of creation: 10 Sep 1998 Date of revision: Handle: RePEc:wpa:wuwpma:9809005
Note: Type of Document - Acrobat PDF; prepared on IBM PC; to print on PostScript; pages: 43; figures: included Contact details of provider: Web page: http://129.3.20.41
For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its listing, contact: (EconWPA).
Related research
Keywords:
Find related papers by JEL classification: E - Macroeconomics and Monetary Economics
This paper has been announced in the following NEP Reports:
References listed on IDEAS Please report citation or reference errors to , or , if you are the registered author of the cited work, log in to your RePEc Author Service profile, click on "citations" and make appropriate adjustments.: