Uruguay Selected Issues

This Selected Issues paper examines the drivers and implications of the agricultural land price boom in Uruguay. It finds that almost half of the increase in agricultural land prices between 2000 and 2010 can be explained by commodity price dynamics. At the same time, farmland prices are estimated to have played an important role in the transmission of commodity price shocks to economic activity, accounting for about 30 percent of the effect of commodity price shocks on GDP growth in the region. The paper also examines the performance of Uruguay’s exports and external balances over the past decade.

Selected Issues

This paper examines the dimensions in which Uruguay’s financial development is lagging, and the benefits that might accrue if obstacles to development in these areas were removed. The analysis focuses on the frictions affecting firms’ access to credit, corporate credit deepening, and the efficiency of financial intermediation in Uruguay, and quantifies the potential economic benefits of relaxing these constraints, with implications for firms and households alike. The paper also lays out the basic premises of the model, together with some facts to illustrate different elements of it. The paper presents the results of the calibration and comparative statics exercise. The last section concludes with a discussion of measures that have been taken by the Uruguayan authorities recently, which may alleviate some of the constraints emphasized in the model. The challenge is to implement these measures in a way that maximizes their effectiveness. This may require communication campaigns targeting the youth, elderly and low-income segments of the population, to ensure the widest reach, particularly outside Montevideo.

This paper estimates cyclically adjusted balances for Uruguay, and discusses methodological and practical implementation issues. In line with standard practice, this paper assumes aggregate fiscal revenue elasticity equal to one. The study also focuses on the cyclically adjusted primary balance, so interest payments are excluded from the analysis. It also estimates Cyclically Adjusted Balances (CABs) for both the consolidated public sector and the general government. The economic development and the credibility of the inflation target are discussed. This study identifies the drivers of the low profitability of Uruguayan banks.

This Selected Issues paper quantifies the importance of international food and oil price inflation for Uruguayan inflation. The paper employs the vector autoregressive (VAR) model and Phillips-curve estimations techniques to address these questions. Similar estimations are carried out for a broader set of emerging markets to put the Uruguayan results into an international context. The paper examines spillovers from commodity price increases to measures of core inflation, and reveals that world food prices have had a strong but stable impact on Uruguay's inflation.

Uruguay has achieved more than a decade of high and inclusive economic growth, supported by social stability and reduced regional linkages. The country has weathered the recent global and regional headwinds relatively well so far. Yet the economy is slowing down, while inflation remains above target, and deposit dollarization has risen. While the baseline projection foresees a temporary and moderate slowdown, the country is exposed to further shocks, especially from the immediate region.

Uruguay: Selected Issues