Suchergebnisse

This is the first full scale World Bank Public Expenditure Review (PER) for Armenia. The primary objective of the Report was to review the main fiscal trends in Armenia for the period of 1997-2001 and develop recommendations with respect to further fiscal adjustment, expenditure prioritization, and budget consolidation. The report has the following structure. Chapter 1 reviews the main features of the Government's fiscal adjustment effort, initiated in the mid 90-s. It is focused on the analysis of aggregated indicators of fiscal performance such as deficit, public debt, budget arrears, and tax revenues. Chapter 2 looks at the main expenditure trends in the Armenia consolidated budget for 1997-2001 and makes an assessment of the quality and depth of expenditure restructuring undertaken in this period. Chapter 3 looks at the public sector's activities that remain non-reflected in the regular Government budget, which includes extra- budgetary funds, in-kind external grants, subsidies provided by the state-owned companies in the energy and utility sectors, and operations of the Social Insurance Fund. Chapter 4 presents in-depth analysis of progress made to date in the area of expenditure management and suggests a draft medium-term action plan to address identified weaknesses in budget preparation, presentation, execution, and reporting. Annexes 1 and 2 reflect more specific recommendations with respect to upgrading budget management procedures and the regulatory framework. Chapters 5-7 review expenditure policies in the main social sectors (health, education, social protection and insurance) and provide recommendations on: (i) how current expenditures could be made more efficient; (ii) what should be the main direction for intra-sectoral expenditure reallocation; and (iii) what should be medium-term targets for an increase in public expenditures in these sectors. Chapter 8 estimates a minimum level of budget support in core public infrastructure, which would stop deterioration of existing core assets in respective ...

This Public Expenditure Review (PER) was prepared at the request of Mexico's Ministry of Finance and Public Credit (Secretaría de Hacienda y Crédito Público, SHCP); its analysis of the efficiency, equity and impact of public spending in selected sectors is designed to inform Mexico's ongoing process of fiscal consolidation. The Mexican government's hard-earned reputation for fiscal responsibility and sound macroeconomic management has provided a solid foundation for stability and growth. As Mexico strives to meet the challenges of a dynamic global economic environment, this PER is intended to support the government's efforts to adjust expenditure policies to better reflect the country's evolving macro-fiscal circumstances. The PER is organized into two sections; the first focuses on overarching public expenditure management and cross-cutting policy issues. Chapters two through five examine the national macro-fiscal profile, selected issues in fiscal decentralization, the budget process, the performance evaluation system and human resource management in the public administration. These chapters explore how a combination of revenue shocks and structural expenditure pressures is affecting Mexico's public finances and consider the implications of these trends over the medium term. They evaluate the extent to which federal budgetary inertia reflects sector-level policy commitments and describe how built-in expenditure rigidities can complicate the medium-term consolidation process. Chapters' six through twelve each focus on a sector with especially significant fiscal implications: health; education; social assistance and labor market programs; subsidies for rural development, housing and small-businesses support; water and sanitation infrastructure; and public security. These sector-level analyses explore the combination of demographic trends and policy commitments that are driving a secular increase in both expenditure pressures and budgetary rigidities. The government's policy goal of achieving universal secondary education will permanently increase the education budget, while universal access to basic health insurance will drive a similar structural expansion in public spending on health, which will be compounded by the rising healthcare costs of an aging population. These same demographic trends will also intensify pressure on the social protection budget. The rapid expansion of the police and security services will entail significant long-term spending commitments, and the fiscal impact of accelerated hiring will be magnified by the incorporation of nearly half a million municipal police into the national police force. Taken together, these trends will greatly increase aggregate public spending in Mexico over both the medium and long term.

This Public Expenditure Review (PER) was prepared at the request of Peru's Ministry of Economy and Finance (MEF).The PER offers analysis, options for reform, and measures in selected areas and sectors to achieve efficiency gains and fiscal savings (where possible), while improving (at least not harming) equity. In the context of less favorable external environment, public finance is one of the critical issues that has come to the fore. The gradual fiscal consolidation process initiated offers a unique opportunity to carry out important fiscal and sectoral reforms. Preserve the hard-won gains of sound fiscal policy. This report consists of two parts; Part I focuses on the cross-cutting issues and challenges. The macro-fiscal chapter examines revenue and expenditure trends, provides a fiscal sustainability analysis and an assessment of contingent liabilities. It discusses relevant crosscutting fiscal issues, expenditure rigidities, revenue challenges, and areas to improve the multiannual macroeconomic framework (MMF). The public procurement chapter evaluates procurement practices applied by all government bodies in the budget. It uses the strategic sourcing methodology and data from Peru's procurement platform which for the purposes of this analysis has been merged with the budget accounting system (SEAF). It identifies significant fiscal savings and efficiency gains, many of which are relatively easy to achieve. Part II identifies areas for efficiency gains and potential fiscal savings in five selected sectors. These sectors include water and sanitation, health, education, citizen security, and transport. They account for a significant share of the budget and represent a substantial share of public service delivery. These chapters provide several approaches and perspectives in looking at technical and allocative efficiency. The PER identifies at least 1.4 percent of GDP in fiscal savings that arise from efficiency reforms and measures across the areas examined.

Ethiopia's remarkable socio-economic transformation over the last decade has been marked by: a reorientation of expenditure from recurrent to capital; a significant devolution of resources from Federal Government to Regions; and a clear prioritization of infrastructure spending, while protecting spending on education at four percent of GDP. The Government of Ethiopia has also leveraged external resources to boost spending in pro-poor sectors, particularly health and social protection. As a result, Ethiopia is home to the largest social safety net program in Africa, and has also achieved remarkable health outcomes using cost effective approaches. Recent investments have seen a significant build-up of capital stock, with capital spending at sector level pointing towards increased service capacity. The current public investment-led strategy requires to be complemented by increased budgetary provisions in operations and maintenance so that new investments translate into enhanced service coverage and delivery. As Ethiopia lays the foundation to become a middle income country, and the changing global environment implies declining external assistance, it is imperative that domestic taxation activity support this transition. The current tax-to-GDP ratio is low compared to peer countries, and the tax structure would benefit from increased contributions by direct tax sources. Therefore, there is an immediate need for advancing tax reforms and improve capacity and quality of tax administration. Broadening the tax bases, through review of exemptions, as well as review of tax rates might be venues to consider. Additional revenues will create the much-needed fiscal space to increase funding for operations and maintenance for service delivery, and support fiscal sustainability. As a follow-up to this Public Expenditure Review, the Government of Ethiopia has asked the World Bank to provide further analytical support, with a view to enhance domestic revenue mobilization through simpler and more efficient taxation, while retaining equity priorities in public finances.

Sindh has the potential to become a high middle-income province in Pakistan, but it lags far behind in terms of economic, social and development indicators. Sindh is also the most industrialized province, resource-rich and endowed with the country's largest natural gas and coal reserves. In sum, it has the potential to become a high-growth and high-income region. Nonetheless, Sindh has yet to translate this potential into commensurate economic and social development. The province faces major developmental challenges. Sindh's weak social indicators are partly the result of the inadequate reach and low quality of public service delivery. This Public Expenditure Review focuses on provincial finances and their utilization with the objective of identifying possible reforms to expand the resource envelope and ensure better value for money by improving the management and efficiency of public spending. It includes two important components: (i) a detailed analysis of the major revenue challenges and the various expenditures, including development spending and; (ii) and in-depth assessment of how some of the key government priorities are undertaken, such as education, health, and social protection. The hope is that by better understanding the constraints, reforms can be designed and implemented to maximize Sindh's potential and promote a more equitable and productive path.

Public expenditure on household-based social assistance (SA) in Indonesia has increased significantly since 2005. From a low base in the early 2000s, Indonesia's aggregate national public expenditures on SA permanently increased from 2005 after the central government allocated a portion of the savings from fuel subsidy reforms to a number of SA initiatives. In 2010, national expenditures on SA are estimated at Rp 29,709 billion (US$ 3.3 billion), equivalent to 2.6 percent of total national expenditures and 0.5 percent of gross domestic product (GDP). Indonesia's strong fiscal position leaves Indonesia well placed to further increase SA expenditures. Declining debt payments and subsidy reductions have opened up fiscal space over the past decade and supported a general increase in social sector and SA spending. With debt-to-GDP of just 25 percent in 2010, Indonesia could further increase expenditure on both items without raising debt levels. Nonetheless, current expenditures on SA are dwarfed by spending on regressive energy subsidies which in some years consume over 20 percent of total national expenditures. The increase in spending after 2005 primarily reflects greater central government investment in programs to protect poor households from fuel and food shocks as well as large health and education expenses. The central government is the dominant player in the SA sector, accounting for almost 90 percent of total expenditures. In years when the government has increased regulated fuel prices (2005-06 and 2008-09), the largest compensatory SA response has been an unconditional cash transfer program (BLT) to vulnerable households to help cushion them from the inflationary shock.

This Public Expenditure Review (PER) takes stock of fiscal developments and institutions and analyzes the key issues that bear on the level, composition, challenges, and effectiveness of government spending and the stance of fiscal policy. Understanding these issues is essential, as new fiscal pressures are emerging in the process of economic transformation and as citizens demand higher quality of education and other public services. The fiscal reform agenda remains extensive but working on it will provide an opportunity to strengthen the effectiveness of government and boost inclusive economic growth. In the process of ongoing economic transformation, the government is facing several challenges in fiscal policy, for which this PER has developed policy options.

This public expenditure review (PER) for the Dominican Republic (DR) is designed to inform the government's fiscal expenditure policies and advance its economic and social development priorities. The PER was requested by the government in December 2019, but its scope has been extensively revised to reflect the rapid evolution of the Coronavirus disease SARS-CoV-2 (COVID-19) crisis. This PER finds that institutional fragmentation poses a critical challenge to economic policymaking in the DR. Inadequate coordination between public agencies undermines the effectiveness and efficiency of service delivery and reinforces the monopolistic structure of key economic sectors. These findings are consistent with the analysis presented in the previous PER, completed in 2019, which emphasized the importance of efficiency gains in a context of constrained revenue mobilization and limited borrowing space. Institutional fragmentation aggravates the three most pressing economic policy issues facing the DR: (i) an unsustainable debt trajectory, (ii) slow rates of job creation in the formal sector, and (iii) gaps in both the social protection system and the delivery of basic services.

Public expenditure reviews are one of the World Bank's core diagnostic tools for informing various stakeholders about the state of education financing in a country. Such reviews assess the efficiency, effectiveness, and equity of expenditures on education and their adequacy and sustainability relative to the country's educational goals. All education systems rely on financing to function. Education finance systems pay for the inputs required to implement education policies, such as teachers, school buildings, and learning materials. Governments are under increasing pressure to use education resources efficiently, but often lack guidance on the optimal ways to invest and manage their school finance systems. Meeting the World Bank's twin goals of poverty reduction and shared prosperity in the education sector implies the need to use country and donor resources effectively, efficiently, and equitably. A sound Public expenditure review (PER) assesses how resources are used relative to these goals. This PER is arranged as follows: (i) Part one has the Checklist for education per steps; (ii) Part two provides Checklist for an education per analysis; and (iii) Part three concludes with examples.

Sint Maarten is a high-income small island state located in the Caribbean that occupies the southern half of the island shared with the French overseas collectivity of Saint Martin. Sint Maarten is one of the six islands in the Caribbean that form part of the Kingdom of the Netherlands and since the dissolution of the former Netherlands Antilles on October 10, 2010 it has an autonomous constitutional status as a separate country within the Kingdom. As a small island state, Sint Maarten has an open and largely tourism-based economy. The island belongs to the Leeward Islands, a group of islands located where the northeastern Caribbean Sea meets the western Atlantic Ocean within the Caribbean hurricane belt. Sint Maarten has been exposed to numerous hurricanes, including Luis in 1995, Lenny in 1999, and Irma and Maria in 2017. The PER consists of four interconnected chapters: (i) macro-fiscal developments, (ii) health, (iii) social protection, and (iv) education. The main findings of these detailed chapters are brought together and summarized in this synthesis report. The focus of the PER on challenges in revenue generation and tax administration, public financial management, health and long-term care, social protection and pension systems, and education is motivated by the potential impact of policy and institutional reform in each of these areas on public finance.

Intro -- CONTENTS -- Abstract -- Acknowledgments -- Abbreviation and Acronyms -- Executive Summary -- Introduction -- 1. Macroeconomic and Fiscal Environment -- 2. Main Expenditure Trends -- 3. Off-Budget Elements of the Fiscal System -- 4. Strengthening Public Expenditure Management -- 5. Public Expenditure in the Education Sector -- 6. Public Expenditure in the Health Sector -- 7. Social Protection and Insurance -- 8. Main Financial Requirements in Public Infrastructure -- 9. Public Investments: Trends, Structure and Sources of Financing -- Annexes -- TABLES -- FIGURES -- BOXES.

Agriculture is vital to Moldova's economy. It accounts for 14 percent of gross domestic product (GDP) and employs 25 percent of the labor force; together with agro-processing, it generates more than 20 percent of GDP. While the size of the agriculture sector is one of the largest in Europe, it is comparable to other countries at similar income levels. The sector is also a major foreign exchange earner, with agro-food products comprising about 60 percent of merchandise exports. The Government of Moldova (GoM) identifies agriculture as one of the main drivers of growth in its 2020 national development strategy. Agriculture in Moldova faces both short-and-long term challenges. Increasing public spending on agriculture is not an optimal response to these challenges. Instead, to make the sector more competitive and resilient to shocks, direct budget spending should be reduced in some areas and redesigned or increased in others. Tax expenditures can be streamlined to make them more efficient, cost effective, and equitable.

The Zambian education system has been well endowed with public resources and enjoyed a strong commitment from the government. This has enabled the education system to make good progress. Public education financing has gradually shifted toward the upper levels of education. The education system continues to face challenges to improve the efficiency and effectiveness of resource use.