In 1992, the Government of Mauritania embarked on a series of macroeconomic and structural reforms that have stimulated sustained economic growth, stabilized public finances, and reduced the state's role in the economy and increased private sector activity. These positive developments, furthermore, have resulted in a decline in the incidence of poverty and improvements in social indicators. In order to consolidate and further build upon these achievements, the government has designed a poverty reduction strategy (PRS) that aims to sharply reduce poverty and improve social indicators over the 2001-2004 period. This Country Economic Memorandum (CEM) reviews the economic, structural, and institutional reforms introduced by the Government of the Islamic Republic of Mauritania (GIRM) since 1992, and assesses the economic and social impact of these measures, as a prelude to exploring the long-term structural and regulatory constraints that Mauritania needs to deal with, in order to achieve an accelerated, diversified private sector-led growth and poverty reduction. While sound macroeconomic management is a cornerstone to build the bases of stronger medium and long-term economic growth. Key policy actions leading to the high growth scenario are: enhancing the enabling environment, promoting private investment in the productive sectors in order to diversify the sources of growth, and developing basic infrastructure.