This report documents sri lanka's financial management systems covering budgeting, funds flow, accounting and reporting, and auditing systems. it provides insights into sri lanka's internal control systems, staffing resource capacity, and information technology structure. the intent is to give project teams and consultants a better understanding of the country's financial management systems in order to improve project preparation. find out how high-quality financial management assessments support projects by identifying key risks and enabling the implementation of appropriate actions and reforms to mitigate those risks.
The U.S. economy is on the verge of experiencing the most dramatic tax cut since the 1986 tax reform. The tax reform bill has passed Congress and President Trump has signed it into law, most of which will take effect from the start of 2018. The tax reform will not just impact the domestic economy of the United States. In its current form, it would also have substantial consequences on the global economy. This short article discusses the international implications of the tax reform, focusing its analysis on Korea.
Nepal has made notable socioeconomic progress in recent years: literacy rates have increased, poverty rates have declined, and gender disparities have narrowed. Nepal now strives to graduate to lower middle-income country status and achieve the Sustainable Development Goals by 2030. In 2017, local government elections and the fi rst-ever elections to state assemblies and the Federal Parliament marked crucial steps for the country in its transition towards federalism, as enshrined in the 2015 Constitution.
Azerbaijani foreign debt reached $9.398 billion USD, or 15.978 billion manat, on January 1st, 2018, according to the Ministry of Finance of the Republic of Azerbaijan. GDP reached 70.135 billion manat in the reporting period, leading the share of foreign debt in Azerbaijani Gross Domestic Production (GDP) to total 22.8%. According to the Ministry of Finance, foreign public debt consists of the direct obligations of the state as well as contingent liabilities emanating from sovereign guarantees. It is comprised of loans from international financial institutions to finance infrastructure projects and programmes, as well as government bonds issued to international financial markets. External public debt is predominantly attracted from the World Bank, Asian Development Bank, Islamic Development Bank, European Bank for Reconstruction and Development, Japanese International Cooperation Agency and other financial institutions to finance projects in the economy. CESD calculations show that the foreign debt of Azerbaijan is higher than the officially reported figure. Based on a survey among CESD's contacts, it can be shown that Azerbaijani real foreign debt is in the double digits of billions of dollars. That also means that the share of foreign debt in GDP is, in reality, much higher than the official figure.
The CESD calculations show that the foreign debt of Azerbaijan is higher than the official figure that has reported . Based on the anonymous survey among CESD's contacts in the government show that Azerbaijani real foreign debt is double digit billions dollar. That also means that the foreign debt's share in the GDP in reality is higher than the official figure. The CESD has underlined that Azerbaijan's foreign debt's share in GDP became as a double digit number in the GDP first time after the second devaluation of the manat of in the last decade. The country has been able to keep share of the foreign debt in the GDP as a single digit number by 2015 since 2005.
Despite various reform efforts over the years, the tax system in the Philippines continues to suffer from chronic weaknesses. Tax rates are high relative to the country's ASEAN neighbors, yet revenue productivity remains low. Filipino individual taxpayers are overburdened by personal income tax brackets that have not been indexed to inflation, resulting in bracket creep. The real value of excise tax rates on petroleum products have likewise been eroded by inflation, and the schedule is characterized by a number of exemptions and rates that are low by international standards. The value-added tax base has narrowed from excessive exemptions. The Duterte administration is pursuing a simpler, more efficient, and more equitable tax system to support its economic growth strategy. The administration's Comprehensive Tax Reform Program was filed as House Bill (HB) No. 4774 in January 2017 at the lower house and Senate Bill (SB) No. 1408 at Senate. These bills represent the first of several reform packages that will each focus on different areas of tax policy. The House of Representatives approved a compromise bill, House Bill No. 5636, titled "Tax Reform for Acceleration and Inclusion" or TRAIN in May 2017. HB 4774, HB 5636 and SB 1408 seek to reform the structure of the personal income tax, value-added tax, and excise tax on petroleum products and automobiles, while improving the progressivity of the tax system. A portion of the additional revenues generated will be earmarked for investments in education, infrastructure, and health to stimulate long-term growth. This paper aims to assess the implications of these bills on the distribution of tax burden across income groups, economic incentives in affected sectors, national government revenues, and likely impact on tax compliance. Overall, the proposed reforms are projected to generate additional revenues of PhP 51.3 billion in 2018, PhP 96.5 billion in 2019, and PhP 99.9 billion from 2020 onwards. However, the high estimates are unlikely to be achieved due to an increased risk of noncompliance among SEPs who are expected to face higher effective tax rates under all three bills in comparison to those under the current system. If tax compliance/ efficiency in collecting PIT from SEPs deteriorates, the overall revenue take of national government is likely to be considerably lower than these high estimates. In terms of incidence, the change in the tax burden as a percentage of household income that will result from HB 4774/ HB 5636 and SB 1408 is highest for the poorest income decile and declines as income rises. This reflects the regressive character of the reform when one abstracts from the proposed targeted subsidies intended to mitigate the adverse impact of the reform on the poorer segments of the population. Furthermore, these three bills are estimated to give rise to a net income transfer from households in deciles 1 to 8 in favor of deciles 9 to 10. The results suggest the need to compensate poorer deciles, e.g., the poorest two or four deciles, through targeted subsidies for a longer period than that proposed under HB 4774 and HB 1408.
Differences in income across countries are largely accounted for by productivity variations. The overall productivity growth is attributed to both the productive efficiency of individual firms or industries and the al-locative efficiency between them. The former relates to innovation and technological catch-up to the frontier technology of advanced countries, while the latter is associated with reallocation of factors of production from less productive sectors to higher productive sectors and improving within-sector allocative efficiency of production resources between firms. One of the well-established argument on productivity is that differences in the allocative efficiency account for a large fraction of variations in productivity across countries. That is, alleviating distortions in resource allocation can improve productivity even if there is no technological im-provement.
The stock of external debt owed by low- and middle-income countries reached US $6.7 tril-lion in 2015 (World Bank, 2017). In 2015, ex-ternal debt accounted for 26 percent of the Gross National Income (GNI) of the low- and middle-income countries and 98 percent of their export receipts. In this study, we intend to examine the role that institutional quality plays in defining the debt-growth relationship. The objective is to under-stand whether the presence or absence of qual-ity institutions determines and influences the direction and magnitude of debt's effect on growth.
Fiji's financial reforms were disrupted by the coup of 2000. Since then, Fiji has initiated more targeted reforms. This report, for which work commenced in January 2016, documents the country's financial management systems covering budgeting, funds flow, accounting and reporting, and auditing systems. It provides insights into Fiji's internal control systems, staffing resource capacity, and information technology structure. The intent is to give project teams and consultants a better understanding of the country's financial management systems in order to improve project preparation. Find out how high-quality financial management assessments support projects by identifying key risks and enabling the implementation of appropriate actions and reforms to mitigate those risks.
Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif made a record by becoming the first democratically-elected premier who has presented the fifth consecutive budget in a single tenure in the 70-year history of Pakistan. Although Pakistan People's Party government also completed its five-year term, they had two prime ministers in that tenure. There were a lot of expectations from amongst the people as well as pressure within the party in the run-up to the election that the federal budget 2017-18 would be an election-friendly budget. After all this were to be the first independent budget presented by the PML-N government. The initial four budgets were prepared under the International Monetary Fund (IMF) program. Therefore, in those four budgets, the conditions imposed by the IMF framework took priority in the budget-making process.
In March 2016, elite groups of Natuna and the neighbouring oil-and-gas district Anambas aspired to separate from Kepri to create their own province. Their aim was to secure more fiscal transfers from Jakarta. Among these people was Natuna's former district-head Daeng Rusnadi, who was once imprisoned for corruption concerning oil-and-gas revenues. The plan was supported by Natuna's current district-head Hamid Rizal, whose deputy is Rusnadi's wife. In January 2017, the discourse was adopted by local parliamentarians, who subsequently tried to exploit Jakarta's security interest to push for a "special defence province". Unsurprisingly, Kepri's governor Nurdin Basirun did not support the separation as Kepri would then lose its only oil-and-gas districts. Eventually this spark of separation was doused by the recent gerbangdutas' pledge of funds and the moratorium on the creation of new provinces. On the surface, Jakarta's development funds for Natuna seem to be what the region needs. However, further dependency on the central government's resources may not be helpful in boosting the local economy in the long run. By focusing on the dependence of regions to central government transfers, this article aims to highlight the causes of Natuna's lack of income despite its natural wealth.
In this paper, we focus specifically on areas where digital financial services have significant potential to accelerate financial inclusion through their impact on existing business models. We also provide recommendations for governments and regulatory authorities on how to encourage the development of digital financial services to increase inclusion. In particular, we examine financial inclusion at the base of the pyramid,9 for women, and for MSMEs in four Southeast Asian markets: Indonesia, the Philippines, Cambodia, and Myanmar. Southeast Asia was chosen as a geographic focus because the region represents a microcosm of the emerging markets universe, with countries at various stages of development. The four markets chosen for this study represent the diverse market structures and development stages we see across Southeast Asia. At one end, Indonesia is a major global economy, where financial inclusion efforts have largely been driven by state-owned banks and the digital economy has started to emerge. At the other end, Cambodia's economy is one-fortieth the size of Indonesia's, and financial inclusion has largely been served by Microfinance Institutions (MFIs). This allows us to draw out common themes that may resonate in other emerging markets, as well as important market-specific nuances that may only apply to a narrower group.
China's rising economic and political clout has created both opportunities and challenges for Southeast Asian countries. China's economic cooperation with Southeast Asian countries is multidimensional and multi-layered involving business collaboration, trade and investment, and financial assistance (grants and concessional loans), which are "fused indistinguishably".2 Although the Chinese have claimed that their financial assistance has no strings attached, there is a close link between economic ties and political influence. Some regional analysts argue that "China's rise exerts a profound and complex impact on the political, security and economic contexts of Southeast Asia".3 A Cambodia expert, Sophal Ear, puts it this way, "Taking the geopolitical interests of China in Southeast Asia into account, Chinese investment does not come free; political and economic strings tie those who benefit to the influence of China."
Last week, on October 4th, the budget of the State Oil Fund of the Republic of Azerbaijan (SOFAZ) for 2017 was changed.1 It should be noted that earlier on June 30th, state budget revenues increased by 511 million manat, and expenditures by 1 billion 41 million manat, as amended by the law "On the State Budget of the Republic of Azerbaijan for 2017".2 Changes in the budget of the Oil Fund did not cause wide public debate. We suppose that the changes in the document reflect important symptoms for the analysis and forecasting of the government's current fiscal policy.
This report provides an assessment of the evidence for sugar taxes as a fiscal instrument to improve health. Forty-seven peer-reviewed studies and working papers published in the last five years were reviewed, summarised and assessed for key methodological issues. Experience with sugar taxes is complicated by inconsistencies in their design and context. Most sugar taxes apply to sugar-sweetened beverages, but some also include pure fruit juices or other foods with high sugar content. Some are valoric taxes while others are volumetric. Some taxes were implemented alongside other measures to improve diets or increase awareness of the danger of excess sugar consumption. Sugar taxes are also implemented in some jurisdictions as a means to raise additional tax revenue, with no particular expectation that any reduction in intake will translate into health benefits but sometimes with revenues being earmarked for health programmes.
