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Miguel A Otero Fernandez
,
Jaime Ponce
,
Marc C Dobler
, and
Tomoaki Hayashi
This technical note explores the advantages and disadvantages of establishing state-sponsored centralized asset management companies (AMCs) to address high levels of bank asset distress during financial crises. AMCs may offer potential benefits like mitigating downward price spirals or achieving efficiency gains by consolidating creditor claims and scarce expertise. However, significant risks and costs warrant careful consideration. These include extreme uncertainties in asset valuation and substantial operational and financial risks. Past international experiences highlight the dangers of underestimating these risks, potentially turning the AMC into a mechanism for deferring losses to taxpayers, rather than minimizing them, and ultimately increasing long-term public costs and moral hazard. This technical note emphasizes these trade-offs and discusses crucial design elements for effective AMCs: a clear mandate, transfer pricing that prudently reflects asset values and disposal costs, strong governance with independent management, and efficient operational processes promoting transparency and accountability.
Ozlem Aydin Sakrak
,
Bryn Battersby
,
Mr. Fabien Gonguet
,
Mr. Claude P Wendling
,
Jacques Charaoui
,
Murray Petrie
, and
Suphachol Suphachalasai
This How to Note develops the “green public financial management (PFM)” framework briefly outlined in an earlier Staff Climate Note (2021/002, published in August 2021). It illustrates, how climate change and environmental concerns can be mainstreamed into government’s institutional arrangements in place to facilitate the implementation of fiscal policies. It provides numerous country examples covering possible entry points for green PFM – phases in the budget cycle (strategic planning and fiscal framework, budget preparation, budget execution and accounting, control, and audit), legal framework or issues that cut across the budget cycle, such as fiscal transparency or coordination with State Owned Enterprises or with subnational governments. This How to Note also summarizes practical guidance for implementation of a green PFM strategy, underscoring the need for a tailored approach adapted to country specificities and for a strong stewardship role of the Ministry of Finance.
Sebastian Beer
,
Ms. Dora Benedek
,
Brian Erard
, and
Jan Loeprick
Governments use tax expenditures (TEs) to provide financial support or benefits to taxpayers. The budgetary impact of TEs can be similar to that of direct outlays: after the support is provided, less money is available to fund other government priorities. Systematic evaluations are needed to guide informed decision-mak¬ing and to avoid a situation where the narrative on the benefits of TEs is primarily driven by profiting stakeholders. By TE “evaluation,” this note refers to a process that seeks to systematically inform policymak¬ers on the desirability of introducing or maintaining specific tax benefits by gathering and analyzing avail¬able quantitative and qualitative information on their effects. Evaluation processes can be tailored to different levels of data availability and analytical capacity. An evaluation should focus on the policy objective of a TE and whether it effectively and efficiently contrib¬utes to that policy objective. Although important lessons can be learned from coun¬try practices in implementing increasingly ambitious evaluation processes, there is no single best-practice approach to replicate.
Mr. Carlos Sanchez-Munoz
,
Artak Harutyunyan
, and
Ms. Padma S Hurree Gobin
The Note is meant to assist compilers in the practical application of the agreed defini¬tion to identify resident Special Purpose Entities (SPE) in their jurisdictions and in collecting and reporting SPE-related cross-border data. To this end, these guidelines provide practical advice on the (1) implementa¬tion of the definition of SPEs, (2) possible data sources and processes for collecting and compiling SPE-related statistics, and (3) reporting within the agreed Data Template.
International Monetary Fund. Fiscal Affairs Dept.
The United Kingdom (UK) has ambitious plans to increase infrastructure investment, boost economic growth, reduce regional disparities, and help achieve the climate transition. The National Infrastructure Strategy, Plan for Growth, Net Zero Strategy and Levelling Up White Paper set out the Government’s ambitions—including closing existing gaps in transportation networks, transforming digital connectivity, boosting education, skills, and R&D, accelerating the climate transition and investing in infrastructure at the local level. These goals are supported by allocations of over £600 billion in gross public sector investment over the five-year period to 2026/27. The planned ramp-up in public investment is expected to bring the UK’s annual infrastructure investment to OECD average levels of 3 percent by 2024/25, reversing a process of public capital stock decline that goes back to the 1970s and 1980s.
International Monetary Fund. European Dept.
This Selected Issues paper on Ireland focuses on ensuring an inclusive and growth-enhancing fiscal policy mix. It assesses the scope for improving the tax system toward a more growth-friendly structure, and for achieving efficiency gains in public expenditure. It also discusses upcoming impediments to long term fiscal sustainability and proposes options to achieve a more growth friendly and equity-enhancing revenue and expenditure policy mix. Under the 2021 National Development Plan, the government plans to significantly expand investment to historically high levels over the medium term. Good progress has been achieved in raising public spending efficiency but there is scope for further improvement. The stylized facts highlight the need for reforms to broaden the tax base and find new and stable sources of revenues as well as improving public expenditure efficiency. Public spending should focus on growth-friendly spending and reducing efficiency gaps. Decisive reforms are needed to ensure the future sustainability of the pension system and safeguard long term fiscal sustainability.
Mr. Shafik Hebous
and
Mr. Michael Keen
The recent international agreement on a minimum effective corporate tax rate marks a profound change in global tax arrangements. The appropriate level of that minimum, however, has been, and remains, extremely contentious. This paper explores the strategic responses to a minimum tax, which—the policy objective being to change the rules of tax competition game--—are critical for assessing the design and welfare impact of, and prospects for, this fundamental policy innovation. Analysis and calibration plausibly suggest sizable scope for minima that are Pareto-improving, benefiting low as well as high tax countries, over the uncoordinated equilibrium.
Mr. Fabien Gonguet
,
Mr. Claude P Wendling
,
Ozlem Aydin Sakrak
, and
Bryn Battersby
Public financial management (PFM) consists of all the government’s institutional arrangements in place to facilitate the implementation of fiscal policies. In response to the growing urgency to fight climate change, “green PFM” aims at adapting existing PFM practices to support climate-sensitive policies. With the cross-cutting nature of climate change and wider environmental concerns, green PFM can be a key enabler of an integrated government strategy to combat climate change. This note outlines a framework for green PFM, emphasizing the need for an approach combining various entry points within, across, and beyond the budget cycle. This includes components such as fiscal transparency and external oversight, and coordination with state-owned enterprises and subnational governments. The note also identifies principles for effective implementation of a green PFM strategy, among which the need for a strong stewardship located within the ministry of finance is paramount.
International Monetary Fund. Strategy, Policy, & Review Department
The IMF’s Vulnerability Exercise (VE) is a cross-country exercise that identifies country-specific near-term macroeconomic risks. As a key element of the Fund’s broader risk architecture, the VE is a bottom-up, multi-sectoral approach to risk assessments for all IMF member countries. The VE modeling toolkit is regularly updated in response to global economic developments and the latest modeling innovations. The new generation of VE models presented here leverages machine-learning algorithms. The models can better capture interactions between different parts of the economy and non-linear relationships that are not well measured in ”normal times.” The performance of machine-learning-based models is evaluated against more conventional models in a horse-race format. The paper also presents direct, transparent methods for communicating model results.