Sudan : Rapid Assessment of the Public Investment Portfolio in the Fiscal Adjustment Context

Abstract

Public investment to facilitate growth and poverty reduction is paramount to Sudan's development challenge. The acute need for rebuilding the country's deteriorated infrastructure and service delivery framework underscores the importance of more active and effective public investment. The disproportional composition of the spending adjustment raises particular concern on pro-poor and public investment spending during the subsequent fiscal adjustment period expected to follow. Under the growing fiscal decentralization trend, the state governments have taken up the primary responsibility to provide basic public service deliveries to the poor; in such a decentralized constellation, reduced support from the federal budget could seriously jeopardize the provision of basic services at the state and locality level. In particular, public investment expenditure now has to effectively address service delivery needs and the broader development agenda, while at the same time the overall resource envelope is declining. This note is the result of a rapid assessment of Sudan's public investment portfolio in the context of the anticipated fiscal adjustment. It is not a full-fledged review on public investment projects or the public investment management system. The main scope of the assessment is: to quickly identify available information on public investment projects from existing sources; to provide an contextual overview of the overall public investment portfolio in light of the imminent needs for rationalizing the public investment portfolio; and to outline conceptual guidelines for public investment adjustments and to propose longer-term tasks to improve public investment management.