This Joint Staff Advisory Note (JSAN) focuses on the Second Annual Progress Report for Zambia’s Poverty Reduction Strategy Paper (PRSP). The government’s strategy to reduce poverty focuses on promoting economic growth through macroeconomic stabilization and diversification and improving the quality of service delivery, while addressing crosscutting issues of governance, HIV/AIDS, gender, and the environment. The JSAN provides IMF staff advice on priorities for advancing the PRSP implementation. It highlights progress in implementing the PRSP and provides suggestions for strengthening its implementation. The risks associated with implementation are also described.

This paper reviews Zambia's First Poverty Reduction Strategy Paper (PRSP) Implementation Progress Report covering January 2002-June 2003. The report describes the first one and half years of the implementation of the PRSP in four strategic areas, namely economic and social sectors, governance, infrastructure, and crosscutting issues. It covers the macroeconomic performance-budget and structural reforms with regard to the PRSP refined indicators. The report focuses on the progress made in undertaking structural reforms to support the policy and institutional changes required to effectively implement the PRSP.

This paper presents the Joint Staff Assessment of Zambia's Poverty Reduction Strategy Paper (PRSP) Progress Report. The report concludes that the implementation of the PRSP has been weaker than intended because of the extreme pressures placed on the budget by extrabudgetary expenditures, which reduced the funding available to PRSP programs and activities. The report also acknowledge that Zambia's economic program supported by the IMF's Poverty Reduction and Growth Facility arrangement has been off track since April 2003 owing to fiscal slippages, in particular salary and wage overrun, which led to high domestic borrowing.

This paper presents the Joint Staff Assessment of the Poverty Reduction Strategy Paper (PRSP) Annual Progress Report for Mali. Mali's first annual PRSP Progress Report presents a frank assessment of implementation of the PRSP. The Progress Report highlights Mali's macroeconomic and policy outcomes, strategies, and sector-specific poverty reduction activities during 2002-03. It reviews the overall context in which the strategy was being implemented. It also provides recommendations based on an assessment of strengths and weaknesses noted during implementation of the strategy.

This Joint Staff Assessment examines the Poverty Reduction Strategy Paper (PRSP) Progress Report for Lesotho. Poverty monitoring and the medium-term macroeconomic framework are areas in which the government has made considerable progress. The government has taken a number of steps to ensure that the PRSP will be completed and presented to the IMF and World Bank by November 2003. The report indicates that the government and participating donors have guaranteed sufficient funds to complete the PRSP.