Business and Economics > Budgeting

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International Monetary Fund. European Dept.
This paper presents Republic of Kosovo’s 2024 Article IV Consultation and Third Reviews under the Stand-By Arrangement (SBA) and the Arrangement under the Resilience and Sustainability Facility (RSF). Kosovo’s economic performance has been strong, with growth accelerating in 2024 and inflation falling sharply. The near-term outlook is favorable despite some downside risks. The authorities continue to show strong performance under both programs. All quantitative targets and structural conditions for the completion of the Third Review under the SBA were met. Most RSF Reform Measures have been completed. Fiscal policy should continue to balance sustainability and development objectives and be framed within a solid, rules-based fiscal framework. The 2025 budget envisages a fiscal impulse with full-year implementation of spending measures announced in 2024, a proposed increase in public wages, and the expected improvement in public investment execution. Structural reforms are urgently needed to raise potential growth. Priority should be given to further advancing green reforms and decarbonization, implementing policies to boost female labor-force participation, attracting foreign capital—including from the diaspora—into productive sectors of the economy, and accelerating digitalization.
International Monetary Fund. African Dept.
This Selected Issues paper discusses the rationale for and design of a new Sovereign Wealth Fund (SWF) in Botswana. It reviews the causes of declining financial reserves and calculates fiscal targets that would be needed to achieve insurance and intergenerational equity objectives. While debt ratios have been steady, the government has financed these deficits by drawing down its assets. Intergenerational equity may be better served by creating financial assets, rather than through investment spending, although the two are not mutually exclusive. Botswana has tended to allocate resource revenues primarily to physical and human investment. Before discussing SWF design, it is important to consider the level of savings that the government requires to achieve its policy objectives. There are many reasons why a government may want to generate savings and manage them in a SWF. IMF concludes that a SWF could provide a useful institutional framework to support rebuilding buffers, but achieving significant savings to meaningfully fund an SWF would require much tighter fiscal policy than has been observed in recent years.
International Monetary Fund. Finance Dept.
This paper updates the projections of the Fund’s income position for FY 2024 and FY 2025-2026 and proposes related decisions for the current and the following financial years. The paper also includes a proposed decision to keep the margin for the rate of charge unchanged until completion of the review of surcharges, but until no later than end FY 2025, at which time the Board would set the margin for the rest of FY 2025 and FY 2026. The Fund’s overall net income for FY 2024 is projected at about SDR 4.4 billion after taking into account pension-related remeasurement gain and estimated retained investment income of the Endowment Account.
International Monetary Fund. Finance Dept.
This paper reports on the Fund’s income position for FY 2023 following the closing of the Fund’s accounts for the financial year and completion of the external audit. Overall net income of the General Department was SDR 1.7 billion, SDR 0.1 billion lower than estimated in April, mainly reflecting a decrease in the remeasurement gain reported under IAS 19 (the accounting standard for employee benefits) offset partly by higher-than-anticipated returns from the investment subaccounts compared with earlier projections.
Manabu Nose
How could the GovTech improve budget processes and execution efficiency? Could the GovTech strengthen redistributive function of public expenditure? Based on an event-study method, this paper finds that the introduction of digital budget payments and e-procurement could significantly enhance budget transparency and help expand the coverage of social assistance to reach the most vulnerable population. Exploiting staggered adoption of digital budget payments, a synthetic control regression identifies meaningful increase in pre-tax income shares among the bottom 50th percentile and female workers, especially for emerging market and developing countries, with effects materializing gradually over 10-year period. The paper delves into the potential mechanism driving these equity benefits, highlighting the reduction in business informality as a primary channel. However, the paper emphasizes that the mere adoption of GovTech strategies or digital technologies is insufficient to unlock its full potential. The outcomes are intricately linked to supporting policies, regulations, organizational and system integration, and robust digital connectivity. The paper underscores that inter-agency coordination facilitated by a dedicated GovTech institution emerges as a critical factor for reaping both efficiency and equity gains from GovTech initiatives.
International Monetary Fund. Finance Dept.
This paper reports on the Fund’s income position for FY 2022 following the closing of the Fund’s accounts for the financial year and completion of the external audit.
International Monetary Fund. Finance Dept.
This paper reports on the Fund’s income position for FY 2021 following the closing of the Fund’s accounts for the financial year and completion of the external audit. Overall FY 2021 net income amounted to SDR 4.8 billion or SDR 0.7 billion higher than estimated in April, mainly reflecting a larger than anticipated gain reported under IAS 19 (the accounting standard for employee benefits) and endowment returns exceeding earlier projections.
Moya Chin
Electoral rules determine how voters' preferences are aggregated and translated into political representation, and their design can lead to the election of representatives who represent broader or narrower constituencies. Relying on a regression discontinuity design, I contrast single- and two-round elections in Brazilian municipal races. Two-round elections use two rounds of voting to elect a winner, ensuring that the eventual winner obtains at least 50% of the vote. Theoretically, this can provide incentives for candidates to secure a broader base of support. Consistent with this, I show that in two-round elections, candidates represent a more geographically diverse group of voters, public schools have more resources, and there is less variation in resources across public schools. Effects appear to be driven by strategic responses of candidates, rather than differential entry into races. These results suggest that two-round elections can lead candidates to secure broader bases of support and to distribute public goods more broadly.
International Monetary Fund. Middle East and Central Asia Dept.
This Selected Issues paper conducts a review of taxes on labor in Kazakhstan, which, despite the current relatively low level of collections, have the potential to become an important source of non-oil fiscal revenue. This paper focuses on one group of non-oil taxes, personal income tax and other taxes on labor, and reviews their effective burden, progressivity, and efficiency. These taxes are found to have limited responsiveness to oil-sector fluctuations, and thus help enhance the resilience of public finance to oil shocks. The existing labor tax system is characterized by a low, flat headline rate, limited progressivity except at the lower end of household income distribution due to deduction of the minimum wage, and a relatively high tax burden mainly born by the formal sector. Having a more equitable and efficient labor tax system would involve a targeted strategy for deductions and exemptions, expanding the tax base, and continuing to improve tax design, administration, and collection enforcement.
International Monetary Fund. Middle East and Central Asia Dept.
Selected Issues