Letteratura scientifica selezionata sul tema "Production Credit Associations of America"

The largest organization of capitalists during the Progressive Era was one that most American historians have never heard of. Motivated primarily by overproduction and ruthless competition, many of the nation's largest manufacturers, distributors, and commercial banks formed the National Association of Credit Men (NACM) in 1896 to reduce the supply of credit available to retailers and consumers. The story of the Credit Men confirms many standard assumptions regarding the rise of corporate America to economic power and cultural legitimacy while challenging others. Advances in technology and salaried organization made possible their mobilization, yet more important was the significant lag in the development of mass retail institutions and consequently mass consumerism behind mass production and distribution. The NACM deployed standardized methods and hungered for administrative efficiency but used these modern tools to instill order and ethical discipline in the nation's business, not to secularize the economy and culture of the new century. America's corporate capitalists seized power by promising moral regulation for unbridled individualism.

A variety of social and economic institutions have contributed to the decline in poverty and inequality in Latin America. We focus on the bank-SME nexus because of the importance of banks as a source of finance for small and medium enterprises (SMEs), and the potential role that SMEs can play as sources of innovation, employment, and in reducing poverty and inequality. Our regression analysis of data from World Bank (WB) surveys of firms in Argentina, Brazil, Chile, and Mexico shows that firms that are smaller, newer, less technically advanced, and less well-located firms are more likely to report being credit constrained. The factors that did not count are executive characteristics such as gender, education, and experience in the sector, and firm performance or foreign ownership. Firms that worked with several banks, developed affiliations to business groups or were in trade and political associations were less likely to report credit constraint.

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to develop information on the relative efficiency of Farm Credit System (FCS) lenders. Also the evolution of relative efficiency is examined as influenced by the biofuel boom, the financial crisis, and farm income increases. The paper aims to discuss these issues. Design/methodology/approach – A stochastic frontier production function is used to estimate technical efficiency of FCS banks and associations. Findings – A significant difference is found in efficiency between large and small associations and banks. Larger asset bases and management compensation are found to be positively associated with efficiency. Banks are found to have higher technical efficiency than associations (66-46 percent). Association efficiency is found to be increasing indicating likely effects of recent consolidation. The financial crisis was not found to have a significant effect with the bioenergy and farm income booms being likely countervailing forces. Research limitations/implications – Further work is needed on the impact of the biofuel boom, increases in farm income, and new regulations. Practical implications – The study provides information and indications of strategies for FCS management including additional consolidation. Originality/value – This does an updated assessment of FCS efficiency taking into account changes in consolidation, lending practices, and economic conditions. Implications are developed for management actions such as more consolidation. The study also uses a more advanced methodology compared to older studies.

The study examined the impact of FSAs’ credit scheme on beneficiary farmer’s income in Katsina State, Nigeria. Primary data were collected from two categories of farmers; beneficiaries and non-beneficiaries of Financial Service Associations’ (FSAs) credit scheme with the aid of structured questionnaire and interview method. A multi-stage sampling procedure was adopted and slovin’s formula to obtained the sample size from the four Local Government Areas (LGAs): Bakori, Danja, Funtua and Malumfashi. The data were analyzed using Descriptive statistics such as percentage, frequency etc. and inferential statistics such as Propensity Score Matching (PSM) model. The results from PSM estimator revealed that FSAs’ credit scheme had a positive and statistically significant impact on the income of beneficiary farmers. The Radius matching (0.50) shows that an increase of N21, 158.360 and Kernel Matching shows an increase of N11, 977.580 on average was achieved, by beneficiary farmers who benefited from the scheme. The study revealed that there is a positive and significant impact of the loan scheme on the income of the beneficiaries in the study area at one percent level. There is a need to linking FSAs with formal financial institutions, the provision of adequate amount of loan and timely disbursement of funds to improve loan utilization by the beneficiary farmers. There is also the need to improve the administrative and management processes of the associations. The loan should be monitored by relevant bodies for effective utilization in agricultural production and other economic activities to a

The study was on socioeconomic factors influencing the uptake of coffee production recommended practices in the Kichwamba and Kirugu Sub-counties of the Rubirizi district and was conducted in February 2021. Objectives were to identify the coffee production systems and practices used, identify the socioeconomic challenges associated with the uptake of recommended practices for coffee production, and identify the policy interventions to address the challenges associated with the use of recommended coffee practices. Farmers continue to register low coffee yields hence affecting their livelihoods and incomes and achieving maximum coffee production requires that farmers apply recommended practices since the quantity and quality of the crop rely on the practices used. A cross-sectional survey was conducted using simple random sampling and a total of 376 coffee farmers were sampled. Results indicated that Arabica coffee commonly grown has two major systems intercropping and mono-cropping. The coffee-recommended practices used were weeds control (23.7%), shading (21.5%), pruning (15.5%), fertiliser application (14.1%), pest and disease management (12.2%), water drainage management (6.6%), transplanting (4.0%), and seedbed preparation (2.7%). Statistically significant socioeconomic factors affecting the uptake of recommended practices for coffee were age [p=0.014], education level [p=0.002], labour [p=0.005], Farm size [p=0.001], farming experience [p=0.031], gender [p=0.031], land slope [p=0.048], un-accessibility to credit services [p=0.032], and plot ownership [p=0.049]. Policy interventions were farmer capacity building (35.1%), strengthening agricultural extension (23.7%), credit extension to the farmers (15.7%), re-visiting land reform policies (13.6%), and group formation (11.9%). The study concluded that coffee in the study area was grown under two production systems; intercropping and mono-cropping; the major coffee recommended practices used were; seedbed management, transplanting, pruning, shading, fertiliser application, weeds control, pest and disease management, and water drainage management. Socioeconomic factors like Education level, shortage of labour, farm size, experience in farming, gender, the slope of the land, un-accessibility of credit services, farmer age and plot ownership type were significant socioeconomic factors affecting uptake of recommended practices. Suggested policy interventions were re-visiting land reform policies, credit extension, capacity building, strengthening agricultural extension, and farmer group formation. More education and training for farmers, revisiting land policies, groups, associations and cooperative formation, and credit services extension are recommended.

Purpose The purpose of this paper is to explore smallholder agricultural financing in Ghana’s Northern region by identifying farmers’ preferred traditional and innovative financing methods and estimating the determinants of use of innovative financing methods. Design/methodology/approach This paper presented a list of documented traditional financing methods to farmers during in-depth interviews and employed descriptive statistics to summarize choice and amounts sourced from traditional methods. Two questions from the survey revealed a felt need for extra financing sources for credit-rationed farmers. Farmers with positive responses to either or both questions were classified as “users of innovative financing”. The authors then used a probit model to examine factors that influence decisions to use innovative financing method. Findings Farmers’ own savings, reinvesting past season’s profits and financing maize production with income from other commercial crops were the most popular traditional methods. The authors found complementary relations between formal and informal lending systems in the rural financial market. Smallholders also took farm and non-farm “by-day” jobs to raise income for farm investment and/or joined Village Savings and Loans Associations (VSLAs) specifically to take advantage of possible credit opportunities. These two latter methods were operationalized in this study as innovative agricultural financing. The results show that access to credit, social capital and market participation increased the likelihood of using innovative financing methods. Alternatively, farmer group membership, diversity in crop production and being a household head diminished the likelihood of innovative financing use. Practical implications The activities of VSLAs can be regulated and expanded to spread its benefits to more farmers. Also, creating avenues for dry season labour market participation in the region could enable farmers raise capital for farm investment. Originality/value This study explores existing practices and farmer innovations to agricultural financing and, by so doing, deviates from the vast literature focussing mainly on microcredit provisioning as the main model of smallholder agricultural financing in Africa.

Agriculture plays a key role in Myanmar and it is the backbone of the country’s economy. Among the major export-earning crops in Myanmar, mung bean is one of the important, and it creates many opportunities for smallholders. About 90% of the total production of mung bean is exported for overseas or border trade and has extended markets, especially China, Vietnam and EU countries. This study aims to measure the level of technical efficiency of green mung bean producers and determine the factors influencing the technical efficiency of mung bean production in Tatkon Township, Myanmar. Data from 144 farms were analyzed using a DEA model and Tobit regression. The empirical results reveal that about 46% of farmers had an efficiency score of more than 0.90, which indicates that 54% of farmers were relatively inefficient in their production. The results also show that socioeconomics factors, such as age of farmers, farmers participating in associations and soil fertility, had a significantly positive impact on technical efficiency. Gender, education, access to credit and extension services had a positive impact on the technical efficiency of mung bean production in the study area. To reduce inefficiency, the government should consider providing more services to male farmers and older farmers to improve their capacities, as well as providing an extension of services, new technologies, credit and improved variety for mung bean production.

The Government of India has initiated several programs to provide timely inputs to farmers with special subsidies on regular inputs such as seed material, fertilizers, irrigation, animal purchase, etc. These inputs are supplied through various mechanisms such as government departments, agricultural universities, KVKs, NGOs, local shop owners, producer's associations etc. Studying the agri-inputs available and their supplying mechanisms in India provides clarity on the status of farmers and the number of farmers who benefi ted from diff erent services provided by GOI. A survey questionnaire was developed to collect data from the 14 states with a sample size of 409 farmer respondents and was administered to the Foundation course for Agricultural Research Service (FOCARS)-82 batch, who were undergoing fi eld experience training (FET) at ICAR-NAARM, Rajendranagar, Hyderabad, Telangana State. The survey revealed that most farmers felt satisfi ed with the quality of seed, followed by agrochemicals and chemical fertilizers. Among all the assets, farmers spent the most money on purchasing animal feed (INR 46047.05) followed by planting material- saplings (INR 34445.07) and adult draught animals (INR 31805.07). The maximum number of respondents specifi ed that storage facility for grains, electricity, and byproducts were suffi ciently available. More money is spent on purchasing the recurrent associated input, i.e., irrigation sprinkler/drip, followed by irrigation wells. The Maximum number of farmers has access to Common Property Resources (CPRs) such as pasture land, irrigation sources, threshing fl oors, water harvesting structures, producer's associations, selfhelp groups, and primary cooperative society. About 269 farmers availed credit facilities; among them, 103 farmers took a credit of >10,000-50,000, which was majorly used for input purchase (240 farmers responded). About 132 farmers said they receive subsidies on seed/propagating material, fertilizer/agrochemicals, and irrigation. Most farmers received quality seed/propagating material from the local shop owners, followed by neighboring farmers, govt. departments and private companies. Very few are using/visiting Agricultural Universities, KVKs, cooperatives, NGOs, Agri-clinics, producers' associations, and village panchayats for seed purposes. In terms of credit suppliers, farmers listed public sector banks fi rst, followed by cooperative society credit cards and moneylender. Farmers with medium-sized land holdings have a better chance of availing subsidies compared to small-category farmers. Most small landholders need more opportunities to access agricultural credit. An adequate supply of timely inputs and support of low-cost credit from institutional sources is of great importance to small and marginal, farmers who contribute almost 60 per cent of total food grain production in India. The output of this study would become a benchmark for future assessments and decision-making in the fi eld of agri-inputs.

The adoption of agricultural technologies has become the key to limiting imports and meeting Burundi's rice food needs. This is because rice production is generally low in the country due to the ever-increasing population. This study identified the constraints of rice production, assessed the rate and identified the determinants of the adoption of the rutete rice variety. Primary data was collected using the well-structured questionnaire from 524 rice farmers who were selected using a simple random sampling in the study area. Data analysis was performed using Kendall's tau coefficient for constraints, probit for adoption rate and Heckman's sample selection model for determinants. According to the results, the insufficiency or delay in the supply of fertilizers, the problem of water availability and the problem of access to agricultural credit are the major constraints of rice production. They also show that 29% of respondents have adopted the rutete rice variety. Furthermore, the results show that sex, level of education, planted area, access to extension services, membership in an association and possession of a mobile phone are the determinants of the adoption of the variety of rice rutete. It is therefore recommended that farmers in the study area be encouraged to adopt the rutete rice variety. We also recommend that the government subsidize agricultural inputs and put in place a policy of loosen the tax burden to the microfinance so that the cost of access agricultural credit for rice farmers is lowered. This will prompt an increase of production. Rice farmers who are not members in the farmer-associations should be sensitized to participate.

In the fall of 1993, I had the pleasure of interviewing the world-renowned Czech scenographer Josef Svoboda. We spent some time talking about his career and his longevity as a designer, but it was his response to a question about a specific production that prompted further investigation. When asked about his first full-scale U.S. design for The Opera Company of Boston's 1965 production of Luigi Nono's Intolleranza, the already animated Svoboda exploded. His eyes sparkled as he recalled “the biggest, most complicated and best production I have ever done. It has not been surpassed since.” This was an intriguing comment from a man with over 700 designs to his credit in a career that has spanned six decades, and who has worked in virtually every major opera house and theatre in both Europe and America.

碩士
國立臺灣大學
農業經濟學研究所
95
In 2004/01/31, Legislative Yuan published Agriculture Finance Law, and in the 2005/05/31, agricultural bank of Taiwan is established, let agriculture finance in Taiwan to a new stage. In order to realize if the new revolution have positive effective in agriculture finance, this research tries to estimate the production efficiency of 233 Credit Department of Farmer’s Associations, using empirical data from 2000~2005, assume 6 years have same technology, use DEA approach to estimate efficiency, in some research, it revealed that scale and efficiency have positive relationship, but we consider that different scales will lead to different technology, so we use Rao’s(2003) Metafrontier approach, separating all credit department of farmer’s associations in 3 groups, small , medium and large scale to estimate DEA model, and then use Reinhard、Lovell、Thijssen(1999) approach, treat undesirable outputs as inputs to estimate DEA model. Compare with traditional DEA approach, we find that when we use metafrontier concept to estimate efficiency, small scale will more 0.139 than traditional DEA approach, and medium scale is about 0.091, large scale is about 0.029. Technology gap ratios reveal that large scale group is 0.957, medium scale group is 0.872, small scale is 0.806, it reveals that technology and scale has positive relationship. After Agriculture Finance Law was published, no matter what groups, we find that technical efficiency was all improved, so in this research, we consider that Agricultural Finance revolution is success.

This book explores the first 150 years of how pastors, priests, rabbis were educated in the United States. These clerical and professions were educated to lead in both religious and public life—specifically through cultural production in five social arenas: the family, the congregation or parish, schools, voluntary associations, and publishing. Protestants, Roman Catholics, and Jews established distinct traditions of graduate theological education during this period of development. These schools placed theological and rabbinical disciplines within liberal arts pedagogies that emphasized the formation of character, interdisciplinary reasoning, and the oratorical performance of their professions. Other schools followed for women religious leaders, African-Americans, and working-class whites that built upon these traditions and often streamlined them more toward Biblical reasoning and vocational skills. All of these traditions of theological rabbinical and populist education were transformed by the rise of the modern research university—first in Germany, then in America. Most Protestant seminaries, Jewish rabbinical schools, and many Catholic seminaries were re-aligned to with the modern university to some degree, while populist Bible and mission schools reacted against them. The result was to limit the professional performance of pastors, priests, and rabbis on religious leadership or higher education at the expense of the other historic social arenas in which they once lead. The book ends with an exploration of how best practices from this period of develop theological and rabbinical education might restore a balance of educating clergy for both religious and public life.

Divine Programming chronicles how the Hollywood television industry negotiated Christianity’s middle-American associations as attention to elite audiences increased from 1996 to 2016. From Touched by an Angel and 7th Heaven to Preacher and Daredevil, this book explores how Christianity has been used and discussed within the cultures of Hollywood television production. During this twenty-year span, Christian representation on television dramas evolved to exemplify the cultural divide between white middle America and concentrated urban elites. To balance a diminishing and fractured audience, upscale secular audience niches have become increasingly significant to the development and positioning of serial dramatic television since the 1990s, displacing the power that the mass, middlebrow, and assumed Christian audience previously held. As the importance of that middle-American audience waned during this period, creatives paradoxically used white Christianity’s stories and tropes with greater frequency and different strategies. Once white Christianity had become associated with middlebrow tastes, its representation, to appeal to elite audiences, had to be othered, shifted into the unreality of fantastic genres, and eventually—tentatively—acknowledged and used when the potential reward outweighed the legacy sense of risk. This process was dynamic and required constant, difficult negotiation between using Christianity as part of a show’s plot and attempting to avoid its religious, cultural, and class-based associations.

People everywhere engage in social and solidarity economics to help themselves, community, and society on their own terms. Through a specific form of mutual aid, we examine the people who conscientiously organize financial cooperatives known as rotating savings and credit associations (ROSCAs) to bring positive changes to their own lives as well as others. ROSCAs are an ancient practice which are well documented, especially among Global Majority people. This book spotlights people in Latin America, Africa, Southeast Asia, and Asia who organize and use ROSCAs, commoning and similar cooperative systems, which are made up of voluntary members who cooperatively make regular contributions to a fund that is given in whole or in part to each member in turn. These collective money structures vary greatly across countries in the Global South, composed of ordinary people belonging to similar class origins. People who take up these systems decide on the rules jointly and in the interests of the collective, the members. The book is organized into case studies, and each case engages with J. K. Gibson-Graham’s community economies theory, as well as drawing on local theories and ideas to recognize distinct cultural contexts. This edited collection is the first of its kind organized by scholars concerned about empirical research, and mostly written by Global Majority scholars and activists to write stories using community economies theories about how people, no matter where they live, do their part to make business inclusive.

AbstractCassava is currently the fourth most important food production crop in tropical and developing countries. Cassava root and its by-products are the main source of calories for the diets of 800 million people in Africa, South America, and Southeast Asia. Over the past 20 years, the Brazilian Agricultural Research Corporation (Embrapa) and collaborators have been developing innovations for the use and postharvest processing of cassava. These technologies have been transferred and disseminated to technicians, entrepreneurs, producers, and processors of cassava from several African countries. This South-South cooperation has been conducted in Brazil through short trainings, workshops, and technical visits requested by national R&D institutions, cooperatives, cassava producers, and processors associations and sponsored by international agencies and foundations. In this chapter, we present an overview of the technology transfer activities of Embrapa Mandioca e Fruticultura carried out for Africa, focusing on technological innovations that result in products and by-products of cassava root processing, especially those with great potential for adoption and opening new markets for Africa (e.g., precooked and frozen cassava, cassava chips, among others). The selection of these innovations was based on observations of the trainees’ preferences and interests for technologies that they envisioned willingness to apply and share the technology when returning to their countries.

Abstract With a focus on the racial fabric of nineteenth-century New England, this chapter exposes some of the pitfalls and limitations in the manner that archaeologists frame and ask their questions of material culture in contexts of hybridization. The chapter confronts the complex and multi-faceted composition of intercultural identities and shows that creolization rarely unfolds in a uniform manner, but is fractured and situated, with material culture and associated identities often remaining ‘differentiated’ by the carrying forward of former meanings and associations from one context to another. Whereas, in other studies of enslaved persons, their social and economic capital may arguably be disentangled from the enterprises of slavery through the production of absence and invisibility. The authors of this chapter instead find an ‘unblended’ configuration whereby the potency of the past is a drag on future coalescence, particularly over short durations.

This chapter argues that in Lebanon, economic networks of credit and lending can further contribute to the production of sectarianism as well as the narrowing of the definition of who can be an adequate member of the sectarian “community.” It discusses women's rotating credit associations or shirkets and the rise of a microlending facility that sought to formalize and contain these practices under the more centralized control of an official, Armenian-run organization. The desire to control or replace the shirket practices can be traced back to political actors' long-standing fear of women's informal networks as a potential site of crosscutting relationships that defy narrow sectarian logics of social relations and are therefore threatening to the sectarian social order.

Abstract Credit for turning the United States into a “nation of readers” usually goes to the wide array of antebellum institutions discussed in the previous two chapters. The family, the church, the Sunday school, the common school, the academy, young men’s associations, maternal associations, mechanics’ institutes, private and public libraries, and the lyceum all either offered rudimentary literacy instruction or, in some way, promoted reading. Yet that so many institutions can be listed suggests the fragmented nature of literary socialization in antebellum America. Only after the Civil War with the enactment of compulsory attendance laws, would the common school come to dominate the other institutions of literacy instruction and reinforcement. Until that time, individuals had to find their own way through the complex matrix of institutions teaching or encouraging literacy.

Geneticists such as Liberty Hyde Bailey and Rowland Harry Biffen were prominent leaders in the new science of plant breeding. By 1940 they and their successors had constructed an elaborate body of theory and methods and had acquired a working collection of plant germ plasm. Plant breeding was an ongoing enterprise in a few countries, and production of such crops as wheat and maize already showed the commercial importance of the science. As noted in chapter 3, the promotion of plant breeding and other agricultural science was part of the industrial revolution and stemmed from (1) the repeal of the Corn Laws in Britain, (2) the development of international markets for wheat and other grains, (3) the population growth and emigration of European peoples to many other parts of earth, (4) the subsequent expansion of land in agriculture, and (5) the increasing mechanization of agriculture. Each of these interlinked factors reflected that the growing of wheat and other grains was increasingly a commercial matter and enhanced the role of science. Conditions conducive to the use of plant breeding also spawned organizations to train plant breeders, support their research, and provide easy access to their results. Agriculture, in turn, came increasingly to depend on a steady stream of new varieties from plant-breeding research. Institutional development in plant breeding did not occur in neat synchrony with the conceptual and methodological breakthroughs outlined in chapter 3. Instead, the growth of organizations depended upon (1) the promotion of the science by scientists, (2) the stresses imposed on farmers by market competition in agricultural products, (3) the perils nations faced in war, and (4) in the case of India, efforts by the British to alleviate famine so that India would remain profitable and governable. Both the organizational infrastructure created by 1940 and the conceptual developments were critically important to the subsequent transformation of wheat yields that occurred between 1940 and 1970. This chapter explores the institutional developments to 1940. Britain, America, and India each started to organize agricultural science before 1900 by forming scientific societies, agricultural improvement associations, private and public experiment stations, educational institutions, and government ministries to promote science.

Abstract The American Trucking Associations reports that “In 2014, trucks moved 9.96 billion tons of freight, or 68.8%” of all freight tonnage transported domestically. [1]. "Spending in the U.S. logistics and transportation industry totaled $1.33 trillion in 2012, and represented 8.5% of annual gross domestic product (GDP)."[2] Truck axle shafts for decades have been made from induction hardened carbon steel with 0.4% to 0.5% carbon. Associated metallurgical engineering of steel procurements, forging, processing, and applied machining, impacts axle shaft production and performance. This paper, and the associated presentation at the ASM 2015 Heat Treat Society (HTS) Conference and Exposition, reviews metallurgical principles and controls currently applied to heavy truck axle shaft use and production in North America. Basic metallurgical engineering principles and controls, as historically and currently applied and specified, plus potential opportunities for increasing engineering value optimization, are reviewed. In particular, case depth, surface hardness, microstructure, grain size, chemical compositional interactions, procurement, processing, metallurgical and overall engineering characterizations and achievement targets are discussed.

This paper surveys overall export growth in Chile and focuses on three case studies of the emergence of successful export activities in Chile: wine, pork and blueberries. Each case study discusses how companies, associations, and governments at various levels have addressed market failures and facilitated the provision of public goods necessary for each activity. The case studies additionally profile first movers in each activity and describe the positive externalities they provide to imitators, particularly diffusion of export knowledge. Also included are counterfactual cases of a less successful firm or activity (an unsuccessful wine exporter, other types of berries, and commodity pork production rather than custom cuts, respectively) and a discussion of policy implications.

We developed a technical efficiency analysis of container ports in Latin America and the Caribbean using an input-oriented stochastic frontier model. We employed a 10-year panel with data on container throughput, port terminal area, berth length, and number of available cranes in 63 ports. The model has three innovations with respect to the available literature: (i) we treated ship-to-shore gantry cranes and mobile cranes separately, in order to account for the higher productivity of the former; (ii) we introduced a binary variable for ports using ships¿ cranes, treated as an additional source of port productivity; and (iii) we introduced a binary variable for ports operating as transshipment hubs. Their associated parameters are highly significant in the production function. The results show an improvement in the average technical efficiency of ports in the Latin American and Caribbean region from 36% to 50% between 1999 and 2009; the best performing port in 2009 achieved a technical efficiency of 94%with respect to the frontier. The paper also studies possible determinants of port technical efficiency, such as ownership, corruption, transshipment, income per capita, and location. The results revealed positive and significant associations between technical efficiency and both transshipment activities and lower corruption levels.

Banco de la República is celebrating its 100th anniversary in 2023. This is a very significant anniversary and one that provides an opportunity to highlight the contribution the Bank has made to the country’s development. Its track record as guarantor of monetary stability has established it as the one independent state institution that generates the greatest confidence among Colombians due to its transparency, management capabilities, and effective compliance with the central banking and cultural responsibilities entrusted to it by the Constitution and the Law. On a date as important as this, the Board of Directors of Banco de la República (BDBR) pays tribute to the generations of governors and officers whose commitment and dedication have contributed to the growth of this institution.1 Banco de la República’s mandate was confirmed in the National Constitutional Assembly of 1991 where the citizens had the opportunity to elect the seventy people who would have the task of drafting a new constitution. The leaders of the three political movements with the most votes were elected as chairs to the Assembly, and this tripartite presidency reflected the plurality and the need for consensus among the different political groups to move the reform forward. Among the issues considered, the National Constitutional Assembly gave special importance to monetary stability. That is why they decided to include central banking and to provide Banco de la República with the necessary autonomy to use the instruments for which they are responsible without interference from other authorities. The constituent members understood that ensuring price stability is a state duty and that the entity responsible for this task must be enshrined in the Constitution and have the technical capability and institutional autonomy necessary to adopt the decisions they deem appropriate to achieve this fundamental objective in coordination with the general economic policy. In particular, Article 373 established that “the State, through Banco de la República, shall ensure the maintenance of the purchasing power of the currency,” a provision that coincided with the central banking system adopted by countries that have been successful in controlling inflation. In 1999, in Ruling 481, the Constitutional Court stated that “the duty to maintain the purchasing power of the currency applies to not only the monetary, credit, and exchange authority, i.e., the Board of Banco de la República, but also those who have responsibilities in the formulation and implementation of the general economic policy of the country” and that “the basic constitutional purpose of Banco de la República is the protection of a sound currency. However, this authority must take the other economic objectives of state intervention such as full employment into consideration in their decisions since these functions must be coordinated with the general economic policy.” The reforms to Banco de la República agreed upon in the Constitutional Assembly of 1991 and in Act 31/1992 can be summarized in the following aspects: i) the Bank was assigned a specific mandate: to maintain the purchasing power of the currency in coordination with the general economic policy; ii) the BDBR was designatedas the monetary, foreign exchange, and credit authority; iii) the Bank and its Board of Directors were granted a significant degree of independence from the government; iv) the Bank was prohibited from granting credit to the private sector except in the case of the financial sector; v) established that in order to grant credit to the government, the unanimous vote of its Board of Directors was required except in the case of open market transactions; vi) determined that the legislature may, in no case, order credit quotas in favor of the State or individuals; vii) Congress was appointed, on behalf of society, as the main addressee of the Bank’s reporting exercise; and viii) the responsibility for inspection, surveillance, and control over Banco de la República was delegated to the President of the Republic. The members of the National Constitutional Assembly clearly understood that the benefits of low and stable inflation extend to the whole of society and contribute mto the smooth functioning of the economic system. Among the most important of these is that low inflation promotes the efficient use of productive resources by allowing relative prices to better guide the allocation of resources since this promotes economic growth and increases the welfare of the population. Likewise, low inflation reduces uncertainty about the expected return on investment and future asset prices. This increases the confidence of economic agents, facilitates long-term financing, and stimulates investment. Since the low-income population is unable to protect itself from inflation by diversifying its assets, and a high proportion of its income is concentrated in the purchase of food and other basic goods that are generally the most affected by inflationary shocks, low inflation avoids arbitrary redistribution of income and wealth.2 Moreover, low inflation facilitates wage negotiations, creates a good labor climate, and reduces the volatility of employment levels. Finally, low inflation helps to make the tax system more transparent and equitable by avoiding the distortions that inflation introduces into the value of assets and income that make up the tax base. From the monetary authority’s point of view, one of the most relevant benefits of low inflation is the credibility that economic agents acquire in inflation targeting, which turns it into an effective nominal anchor on price levels. Upon receiving its mandate, and using its autonomy, Banco de la República began to announce specific annual inflation targets as of 1992. Although the proposed inflation targets were not met precisely during this first stage, a downward trend in inflation was achieved that took it from 32.4% in 1990 to 16.7% in 1998. At that time, the exchange rate was kept within a band. This limited the effectiveness of monetary policy, which simultaneously sought to meet an inflation target and an exchange rate target. The Asian crisis spread to emerging economies and significantly affected the Colombian economy. The exchange rate came under strong pressure to depreciate as access to foreign financing was cut off under conditions of a high foreign imbalance. This, together with the lack of exchange rate flexibility, prevented a countercyclical monetary policy and led to a 4.2% contraction in GDP that year. In this context of economic slowdown, annual inflation fell to 9.2% at the end of 1999, thus falling below the 15% target set for that year. This episode fully revealed how costly it could be, in terms of economic activity, to have inflation and exchange rate targets simultaneously. Towards the end of 1999, Banco de la República announced the adoption of a new monetary policy regime called the Inflation Targeting Plan. This regime, known internationally as ‘Inflation Targeting,’ has been gaining increasing acceptance in developed countries, having been adopted in 1991 by New Zealand, Canada, and England, among others, and has achieved significant advances in the management of inflation without incurring costs in terms of economic activity. In Latin America, Brazil and Chile also adopted it in 1999. In the case of Colombia, the last remaining requirement to be fulfilled in order to adopt said policy was exchange rate flexibility. This was realized around September 1999, when the BDBR decided to abandon the exchange-rate bands to allow the exchange rate to be freely determined in the market.Consistent with the constitutional mandate, the fundamental objective of this new policy approach was “the achievement of an inflation target that contributes to maintaining output growth around its potential.”3 This potential capacity was understood as the GDP growth that the economy can obtain if it fully utilizes its productive resources. To meet this objective, monetary policy must of necessity play a countercyclical role in the economy. This is because when economic activity is below its potential and there are idle resources, the monetary authority can reduce the interest rate in the absence of inflationary pressure to stimulate the economy and, when output exceeds its potential capacity, raise it. This policy principle, which is immersed in the models for guiding the monetary policy stance, makes the following two objectives fully compatible in the medium term: meeting the inflation target and achieving a level of economic activity that is consistent with its productive capacity. To achieve this purpose, the inflation targeting system uses the money market interest rate (at which the central bank supplies primary liquidity to commercial banks) as the primary policy instrument. This replaced the quantity of money as an intermediate monetary policy target that Banco de la República, like several other central banks, had used for a long time. In the case of Colombia, the objective of the new monetary policy approach implied, in practical terms, that the recovery of the economy after the 1999 contraction should be achieved while complying with the decreasing inflation targets established by the BDBR. The accomplishment of this purpose was remarkable. In the first half of the first decade of the 2000s, economic activity recovered significantly and reached a growth rate of 6.8% in 2006. Meanwhile, inflation gradually declined in line with inflation targets. That was how the inflation rate went from 9.2% in 1999 to 4.5% in 2006, thus meeting the inflation target established for that year while GDP reached its potential level. After this balance was achieved in 2006, inflation rebounded to 5.7% in 2007, above the 4.0% target for that year due to the fact that the 7.5% GDP growth exceeded the potential capacity of the economy.4 After proving the effectiveness of the inflation targeting system in its first years of operation, this policy regime continued to consolidate as the BDBR and the technical staff gained experience in its management and state-of-the-art economic models were incorporated to diagnose the present and future state of the economy and to assess the persistence of inflation deviations and expectations with respect to the inflation target. Beginning in 2010, the BDBR established the long-term 3.0% annual inflation target, which remains in effect today. Lower inflation has contributed to making the macroeconomic environment more stable, and this has favored sustained economic growth, financial stability, capital market development, and the functioning of payment systems. As a result, reductions in the inflationary risk premia and lower TES and credit interest rates were achieved. At the same time, the duration of public domestic debt increased significantly going from 2.27 years in December 2002 to 5.86 years in December 2022, and financial deepening, measured as the level of the portfolio as a percentage of GDP, went from around 20% in the mid-1990s to values above 45% in recent years in a healthy context for credit institutions.Having been granted autonomy by the Constitution to fulfill the mandate of preserving the purchasing power of the currency, the tangible achievements made by Banco de la República in managing inflation together with the significant benefits derived from the process of bringing inflation to its long-term target, make the BDBR’s current challenge to return inflation to the 3.0% target even more demanding and pressing. As is well known, starting in 2021, and especially in 2022, inflation in Colombia once again became a serious economic problem with high welfare costs. The inflationary phenomenon has not been exclusive to Colombia and many other developed and emerging countries have seen their inflation rates move away from the targets proposed by their central banks.5 The reasons for this phenomenon have been analyzed in recent Reports to Congress, and this new edition delves deeper into the subject with updated information. The solid institutional and technical base that supports the inflation targeting approach under which the monetary policy strategy operates gives the BDBR the necessary elements to face this difficult challenge with confidence. In this regard, the BDBR reiterated its commitment to the 3.0% inflation target in its November 25 communiqué and expects it to be reached by the end of 2024.6 Monetary policy will continue to focus on meeting this objective while ensuring the sustainability of economic activity, as mandated by the Constitution. Analyst surveys done in March showed a significant increase (from 32.3% in January to 48.5% in March) in the percentage of responses placing inflation expectations two years or more ahead in a range between 3.0% and 4.0%. This is a clear indication of the recovery of credibility in the medium-term inflation target and is consistent with the BDBR’s announcement made in November 2022. The moderation of the upward trend in inflation seen in January, and especially in February, will help to reinforce this revision of inflation expectations and will help to meet the proposed targets. After reaching 5.6% at the end of 2021, inflation maintained an upward trend throughout 2022 due to inflationary pressures from both external sources, associated with the aftermath of the pandemic and the consequences of the war in Ukraine, and domestic sources, resulting from: strengthening of local demand; price indexation processes stimulated by the increase in inflation expectations; the impact on food production caused by the mid-2021 strike; and the pass-through of depreciation to prices. The 10% increase in the minimum wage in 2021 and the 16% increase in 2022, both of which exceeded the actual inflation and the increase in productivity, accentuated the indexation processes by establishing a high nominal adjustment benchmark. Thus, total inflation went to 13.1% by the end of 2022. The annual change in food prices, which went from 17.2% to 27.8% between those two years, was the most influential factor in the surge in the Consumer Price Index (CPI). Another segment that contributed significantly to price increases was regulated products, which saw the annual change go from 7.1% in December 2021 to 11.8% by the end of 2022. The measure of core inflation excluding food and regulated items, in turn, went from 2.5% to 9.5% between the end of 2021 and the end of 2022. The substantial increase in core inflation shows that inflationary pressure has spread to most of the items in the household basket, which is characteristic of inflationary processes with generalized price indexation as is the case in Colombia. Monetary policy began to react early to this inflationary pressure. Thus, starting with its September 2021 session, the BDBR began a progressive change in the monetary policy stance moving away from the historical low of a 1.75% policy rate that had intended to stimulate the recovery of the economy. This adjustment process continued without interruption throughout 2022 and into the beginning of 2023 when the monetary policy rate reached 12.75% last January, thus accumulating an increase of 11 percentage points (pp). The public and the markets have been surprised that inflation continued to rise despite significant interest rate increases. However, as the BDBR has explained in its various communiqués, monetary policy works with a lag. Just as in 2022 economic activity recovered to a level above the pre-pandemic level, driven, along with other factors, by the monetary stimulus granted during the pandemic period and subsequent months, so too the effects of the current restrictive monetary policy will gradually take effect. This will allow us to expect the inflation rate to converge to 3.0% by the end of 2024 as is the BDBR’s purpose.Inflation results for January and February of this year showed declining marginal increases (13 bp and 3 bp respectively) compared to the change seen in December (59 bp). This suggests that a turning point in the inflation trend is approaching. In other Latin American countries such as Chile, Brazil, Perú, and Mexico, inflation has peaked and has begun to decline slowly, albeit with some ups and downs. It is to be expected that a similar process will take place in Colombia in the coming months. The expected decline in inflation in 2023 will be due, along with other factors, to lower cost pressure from abroad as a result of the gradual normalization of supply chains, the overcoming of supply shocks caused by the weather, and road blockades in previous years. This will be reflected in lower adjustments in food prices, as has already been seen in the first two months of the year and, of course, the lagged effect of monetary policy. The process of inflation convergence to the target will be gradual and will extend beyond 2023. This process will be facilitated if devaluation pressure is reversed. To this end, it is essential to continue consolidating fiscal sustainability and avoid messages on different public policy fronts that generate uncertainty and distrust. 1 This Report to Congress includes Box 1, which summarizes the trajectory of Banco de la República over the past 100 years. In addition, under the Bank’s auspices, several books that delve into various aspects of the history of this institution have been published in recent years. See, for example: Historia del Banco de la República 1923-2015; Tres banqueros centrales; Junta Directiva del Banco de la República: grandes episodios en 30 años de historia; Banco de la República: 90 años de la banca central en Colombia. 2 This is why lower inflation has been reflected in a reduction of income inequality as measured by the Gini coefficient that went from 58.7 in 1998 to 51.3 in the year prior to the pandemic. 3 See Gómez Javier, Uribe José Darío, Vargas Hernando (2002). “The Implementation of Inflation Targeting in Colombia”. Borradores de Economía, No. 202, March, available at: https://repositorio.banrep.gov.co/handle/20.500.12134/5220 4 See López-Enciso Enrique A.; Vargas-Herrera Hernando and Rodríguez-Niño Norberto (2016). “The inflation targeting strategy in Colombia. An historical view.” Borradores de Economía, No. 952. https://repositorio.banrep.gov.co/handle/20.500.12134/6263 5 According to the IMF, the percentage change in consumer prices between 2021 and 2022 went from 3.1% to 7.3% for advanced economies, and from 5.9% to 9.9% for emerging market and developing economies. 6 https://www.banrep.gov.co/es/noticias/junta-directiva-banco-republica-reitera-meta-inflacion-3