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1、Acknowledgements ftis Regular Economic Report (RER) covers economic developments, prospects, and economic policies in the Western Balkans region: Albania, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Kosovo, Montenegro, North Macedonia and Serbia.fte report is produced twice a year by a team led by Edith Kikoni and Enri
2、que Blanco Armas (Task Team Leaders), ftis issues core team included World Bank staff working on the Western Balkan countries (with additional contributions to specific sections): Christoph Ungerer, Nicolo Dalvit (Growth section), Sanja Madzarevic-Sujster, Filip Jolevski (Labor section), Trang Nguye
3、n, Ana Maria Oviedo, Leonardo Lucchetti (Poverty section), Milan Lakicevic, Besart Myderrizi (Fiscal section), Hilda Shijaku (Monetary section), Johanna Jaeger (Financial sector section), Sandra Hlivnjak (External section), Lazar Sestovic (Outlook section) and Tania Ghossein, Sylvia Solf and Ahmed N
4、auraiz Rana (Spotlight). Additional contributions were made by: Stefanie Koettl- Brodmann (Spotlight); Collette Wheeler (Outlook Section); Carlos Gustavo Ospino Hernandez (Poverty section); Alena Kantarovich, Alper Oguz, Gunhild Berg, Keler Gjika and Qianye Zhang (Financial sector section) and Marc
5、Schiffbauer and Asli Senkal.Research assistance was provided by Suzana Jukic. Anne Grant provided assistance in editing, and Budy Wirasmo assistance in designing. fte cover image was created by Sanja lanic.fte dissemination of the report and external and media relations are managed by an External Co
6、mmunications team comprised of John Mackedon, Artem Kolesnikov, Paul A. Clare, Lundrim Aliu, Anita Bozinovska, Ana Gjokutaj, Jasmina Hadzic, Gordana Filipovic, Mirjana Popovic, Sanja Tanic and Carl R Hanlon.fte team is grateful to Linda Van Gelder (Regional Director for the Western Balkans); Lalita
7、Moorty (Regional Director, Equitable Growth, Finance and Institutions); Jasmin Chakeri (Practice Manager, Macroeconomics, Trade, and Investment Global Practice); and the Western Balkans Country Management team for their guidance in preparation of this report. fte team is also thankful for comments o
8、n earlier drafts of this report received from the Ministries of Finance and Central Banks in Western Balkans countries.ftis Western Balkans RER and previous issues may be found at: .estimated to have contracted by 6.9 percent, but a substantial public support program helped avoid a deeper recession.
9、 Growth in North Macedonia and BIH was somewhat lower than expected, due to a strong second wave of CO VID-19 infections.A drop in private consumption was a major driver of economic contraction (Figure 2.2). Private consumption fell across the region as households cut spending on goods and services
10、due to social distancing restrictions and general uncertainty about the future. As stimulus packages were adopted, public consumption increased, partly offsetting the drop in private consumption. Except for Kosovo, however, the additional public consumption was not enough to compensate for the plung
11、e in private consumption, so that aggregate consumption fell, subtracting from aggregate growth in the region.The uncertainty and economic disruption caused by the pandemic caused a major drop in private investment. Public investment went up across half of the region as part of an effort to stimulat
12、e the economy and minimize the magnitude of the economic downturn, ftis increase was particularly significant in Serbia, where a large government stimulus program more than offset the slump in private investments.The disruptions to travel and international trade, coupled with a drop in domestic dema
13、nd, reduced both imports and exports of goods and services. In Montenegro, Kosovo, and Serbia exports dropped more than imports and the decline in net exports subtracted from aggregate growth. fte decline was particularly big in Montenegro, where the collapse in foreign tourism had a major impact on
14、 the net service trade account, fte decline in net exports was the primary contributor to Montenegros recession, accounting for a 6.7 pp drop in its economys growth rate.Among economic sectors, services suffered the most from social distancing restrictions. Tourism was particularly hard hitacross th
15、e region, foreign tourist stays collapsed. Wholesale and retail trade shrank, and in most countries it was unable to recover even in Q4 of 2020. Industry and construction were devastated during the first wave of the pandemic but started to recover in Q3 and Q4. Construction recovered particularly we
16、ll in Albania thanks to the post 2019 earthquake reconstruction effort. Financial sectors so far have held up well, showing no major sign of stress, but the situation might worsen when fiscal and monetary support is eased.A nascent recovery emerged but activity has since moderated. Following the slu
17、mp in second-quarter output (down by 10.1 percent on a quarterly basis), Western Balkan economies experienced a firm bounce in the third quarter (up by 7.8 percent) as lockdown measures were lifted. Output was broadly stable in the final quarter, albeit amid a weakening trend as a spike in coronavir
18、us cases late in the year led to a renewed tightening of restrictions. Key real sector indicators such as exports of goods, retail sales and manufacturing maintained positive but moderating trends in January 2021 mostly driven by a continued recovery of external demand, as well as private consumptio
19、n.Box 2.1. Forecasting growth in times of crisis.The COVID-19 pandemic was an unexpected and unprecedented shock for the global economy. While in recent years some experts had warned policy makers of the risk of pandemics, no one could have predicted with certainty that in 2020 one would spread thro
20、ughout the world. When producing forecasts of economic growth economists like to think about the main risks to the forecasts and how they could affect growth, but predictions in late 2019 about 2020 growth did not include the spread of a global pandemic that would bring most economies into deep rece
21、ssion.News of a new virus started to emerge in January and February 2020 and by the time predictions in the 2020 spring edition of this report were formulated, the pandemic had struck much of the world, forcing many countries to impose lockdowns and other social distancing measures. What would happe
22、n next was highly uncertain, with little information available on the nature of the virus and on the likely duration of the pandemic. Optimistic scenarios hoped for it to end by late Spring, but experts warned that it could last much longer.In Europe, the drop in new infections over the summer fed h
23、opes of a quick way back to normal, but expectations cooled in late September when infections again rose. Uncertainty over the strength and length of this second wave of infections and over the speed of vaccine rollouts was high when predictions for the 2020 Fall issue were drafted. New infections h
24、ave since surged in the Western Balkans and, except in Serbia, vaccination has been limited, drastically narrowing the scope for a recovery in Q4 2020 and QI 2021.Looking back at the past year or so gives a good overview of the challenges forecasters have had to deal with recently. While demand for
25、guidance was high, unprecedented levels of uncertainty made predicting the future more and more difficult. Economic forecasting is usually based on a mix of theory and past empirical evidence, but it ultimately must rely on expectations about future uncertain events. When uncertainty increases, so d
26、oes the complexity involved in articulating expectations. Similarly, incorporating into forecasting exercises low probability tail events like market crashes, natural disasters, and pandemics is intrinsically challenging because such eventscan hardly be incorporated into z/best guess” scenarios unti
27、l they hit the economy, fte manifestation of an unlikely and unpredictable event such as the current pandemic and the rise in uncertainty it caused thus represented an extreme circumstance, and a challenging test for forecasters.Review of past RER forecasts for the Western Balkans region confirms th
28、at differences between predicted and realized growth tend to be larger when aggregate growth is less stable, usually around recessions when unexpected shocks are realized in the economySource: Data from World Bank RERs.Note: The graph shows data from the World Bank growth forecasts for 2020 made in
29、the Spring 2019, Fall 2019, Spring 2020, Fall 2020, as well realized growth in 2020. Growth forecasts from 2019 are based on forecasted GDP for both 2019 and 2020. Growth forecasts from 2020 are based on realized GDP in 2019 and forecasted GDP in 2020., fte left panel in Figure B2.1.2 plots the devi
30、ation between forecasted and realized growth for same-year forecasts since 2013 (y-axis). Deviations for a given year t areFigure B2.1.1. The pandemic led to a major shift in growth expectations.-20ALB BIH KOS MKD M 赃 SRiSpring 19。Fall 193Spring 20 3 Fall 20 RealizedBox 2.1 continuedplotted against
31、a simple measure of instability in realized growth: the difference between growth at t and growth at t-1 (x-axis). fte panel shows a positive relation between these two variables, suggesting that larger changes in the growth rate of an economy were associated with larger deviations between predicted
32、 and realized growth.Similarly, disaggregation by countries in the region suggests that correctly predicting growth tends to be more difficult when the economies are more volatile, fte right panel in Figure B2.1.2 plots the mean absolute deviation between predicted and realized growth for same year
33、forecasts for each country in the region between 2013 and 2019 (y-axis), against the variance of each countr/s realized growth over the same period (x-axis). Figure B2.1.2 displays a positive correlation between these two statistics and shows that absolute deviations between predicted and realized g
34、rowth tended to be higher in countries experiencing a more volatile growth process.Predicted-realized growth (pp)4-8-6-4-202468Change in realized growth (pp)FallMean absolute deviation (pp)1.30123456Variance of realized growthSpringSource: Data from World Bank RERs.Note: Data are for GDP growth betw
35、een 2013 and 2019 as forecasted by the World Bank in the Spring and Fall of the same year (e.g. growth in 2019 as predicted in the Spring of 2019). Deviations are expressed in percentage points. Change in realized growth is calculated as the difference between realized GDP growth in year t and in ye
36、ar t-1. The right panel pools data from Spring and Fall forecasts between 2013 and 2019 for each country in the region.While the COVID-19 pandemic has illuminated the challenges of forecasting when uncertainty is high, macroeconomic predictions are nevertheless a useful tool for the policy maker. Be
37、sides providing an assessment of likely future economic developments, they can facilitate the policy dialogue between different stakeholders and promote a discussion of each partys expectations about future uncertain events. It will be important for forecasters to take stock of the lessons learned f
38、rom the current unprecedented period of uncertainty. Supporting a best guess scenario with a more rigorous assessment of the uncertainty surrounding future events can certainly add value for policy makers See for example Alessi et al. (2014), Odendahl (2019) as well as some recent works by FED econo
39、mists on the subject (e.g. Reifschneider, Tulip (2019) and Adams et al. (2020).1. Assessments of forecast accuracy done by other institutions usually find ex-post forecast errors to be bigger around recessions. See for example the analyses by the IMF (Genberg, Martinez (2014), OECD (OECD, 2014), and
40、 the European Commission (Fioramanti et al. (2014).3. The labor market is rebounding from the depths of the recession ftis analysis was affected by (1) delays in publishing Q4 2020 Labor Force Survey (LFS) data in Kosovo; and (2) a sampling revision in Bosnia and Herzegovina that improved labor mark
41、et indicators in 2020 but made them no longer comparable with previous LFS data. Using administrative employment and unemployment data helped approximate what happened with labor in Q4 2020 in Kosovo.After several years of continuous improvement of labor market indicators, the COVID-19 pandemic swif
42、tly reversed the hard-won gains. However, unprecedented government responses across the region (elaborated in the Fall Regular Economic Report)travel bans caused serious damage to tourism. Nevertheless, at 52 percent, Albania still has the highest employment rate in the region; in Kosovo, at the oth
43、er extreme, only about 30 percent of the working-age population have jobs.Change in employment, percent, y-o-yFigure 32 Most sectors were hit hard and job losses remain in many.SOLIOUEPE q_qnd s 一痘-poupuuz uo曼unEEs Es-zznol Hodsuml -801 sw=5 uo一莒Isucs .Emownupw pc三 alm-nouoa-25Two-quarter average y-
44、o-y growth, percent1220笋W 湃蟒0/何入啖儿一ALB - BIH- MKD- MNE- SRB-WB6 -KOS, rhsFigure 3.1. Employment plunged but is slowly rebounding.Source: National statistics offices and World Bank staff estimates.Note: WB6 excludes BiH given the change in the LFS sample.partly alleviated the pandemics impact. By Apr
45、il 2020, all Western Balkan countries had introduced job retention measures through partial or full compensation for wage costs, in addition to health protection measures, tax relief, guarantee schemes, subsidized credit lines, and social assistance measures, ftese measures were mostly in place unti
46、l end-2020, although less intensive and more targeted as economies started recovering. Several countries kept wage subsidies in place even in early 2021. Still, the employment rate (15+) declined, from 44.6 percent in December 2019 to 43.2 percent by end 2020. fte largest declines were 7.9 percentag
47、e points (pp) in Montenegro and 1.8pp in Albania, where closures andSource: National statistics offices and World Bank staff estimates.In 2020 some 69,900 jobs were lost in the Western Balkans ftis is without BiH, which given the change in the LFS sample saw a rise in the number of employed.一in Q2 1
48、44,000 jobs disappeared, but almost half were later recovered (Figure 3.1). Most of the losses were in tourism; Albania and Montenegro account for most of the losses. In Q3Z employment rebounded in Albania, with tourism and reconstruction partly absorbing losses in manufacturing jobs. However, most
49、new jobscould not compensate for the earlier losses; In Montenegro, employment fell to a 7-year 1。此 with losses primarily in tourism, construction, transport, manufacturing, and trade, and it has yet to rebound. Loss of jobs in the Western Balkans was greatest in construction, manufacturing, hotels and restaurants, trade, and transport (Figure 3.2), but by yearend several of these sectors had almost recovered, especially construct