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International Monetary Fund. Asia and Pacific Dept
Prudent macroeconomic policies have supported India’s economic resilience, with growth expected to recover from a recent softening and inflation expected to converge to target. Risks to the outlook include deepening geoeconomic fragmentation and a slower pace of domestic demand recovery.
International Monetary Fund. Fiscal Affairs Dept.
An IMF team found that the State of Odisha had an overall public investment management (PIM) system that compared well with other emerging market economies, reflecting in particular strong institutions at the execution stage, which have helped the State increase significantly its public investment effort over the last few years. The State also displays some encouraging practices in terms of climate-sensitive PIM. However, several challenges persist and have to do mostly with the first stage (planning, appraisal) and the second stage (maintenance, selection of projects) of the PIM cycle. The team has identified five high-priority recommendations that could improve PIM processes and support the effective implementation of the Government of Odisha’s investment policy and development agenda, including to increase resilience against climate change.
Rajan Govil
and
Khyati Chauhan
Lack of convergence in per capita income across Indian states requires greater resources for lower-income states for investment and improved public services. Central and state governments need to raise revenue (both tax and non-tax), dismantle the administered pricing mechanism, reduce subsidies, and reorient expenditure toward national and state-level priorities. This is essential to ensure India remains on a sustainable fiscal path with higher growth, given the high public debt at the centre and state level. The observed wide differences in fiscal parameters across states require a tailored policy for each state. The large stock of debt of several states puts at risk the adequate financing of growth-enchancing expenditures.
Charla Britt
and
Danielle Egerer
This paper discusses connections between female economic empowerment and government spending. It is an abbreviated overview for non-gender-experts on how fiscal expenditure may support female economic empowerment as an interim step toward advancing gender equality. From this perspective, it offers a preliminary exploration of key factors and indicators associated with gender-differentiated impacts in each of five main categories of public spending (education, health, capital expenditure, government employment and compensation, and social protection and labor market programs). It examines and proposes indices within each category that can be used to identify and measure related gender gaps and suggests associations and connections between those indices, public spending, and other available proxy measurements with some benchmarking potential which is summarized at the end of each category in a Gender Lens Matrix for ease of reference. The paper draws on an extensive literature review and examination of publicly available datasets. It also highlights and discusses gaps in data which limit gender analysis. The purpose of the paper is to advance dialogue on the adoption of a gendered approach to government spending, by providing a gender lens that may assist country level assessments and discussions among IMF staff and member country authorites.
International Monetary Fund. Asia and Pacific Dept
The 2021 Article IV Consultation highlights that the Maldives is recovering after the historical 2020 fall in tourism, aided by a rapid coronavirus disease 2019-vaccination program rollout. While the prompt and comprehensive policy approach in early 2020 was effective, a more prolonged pandemic and ambitious infrastructure projects are further weakening large pre-pandemic fiscal and external vulnerabilities. The strong (but still partial) recovery in tourism since 2020Q4 has improved the outlook, but fiscal and external positions are projected to remain weak over the medium term, underpinned by current capital expenditure plans. The Maldives has both a high risk of external debt distress and high overall risk of debt distress. The team agreed that a tighter monetary policy stance might be needed to ensure compatibility with the exchange rate peg, lower external imbalances and build-up reserves. They supported the Maldives Monetary Authority’s ongoing efforts to modernize monetary policy and the foreign exchange operations framework, including those aimed at eliminating exchange rate restrictions and multiple currency practices.
David Amaglobeli
,
Ruud A. de Mooij
,
Andualem Mengistu
,
Mariano Moszoro
,
Manabu Nose
,
Soheib Nunhuck
,
Sailendra Pattanayak
,
Lorena Rivero del Paso
,
Frankosiligi Solomon
,
Ms. Rebecca Sparkman
,
Hervé Tourpe
, and
Gerardo Uña
Digital divide across countries and within countries continues to persist and even increased when the quality of internet connection is considered. The note shows that many governments have not been able to harness the full potential of digitalization. Governments could play important role to facilitate digital adoption by intervening both on supply (investing in infrastructure) and demand side (increase internet affordability). The note also documents significant dividends from digital adoption for revenue collection and spending efficiency, and for outcomes in education, health and social safety nets. The note also emphasizes that digitalization is not a substitute for good governance and that comprehensive reform plans embedded in National Digital Strategies (NDS) combined with legal and institutional reforms are needed to ensure that governments can reap full benefits from digitalization and manage the risks appropriately.
Ms. Mercedes Garcia-Escribano
,
Ms. Tewodaj Mogues
,
Marian Moszoro
, and
Mauricio Soto
South Asia has experienced significant progress in improving human and physical capital over the past few decades. Within the region, India has become a global economic powerhouse with enormous development potential ahead. To foster human and economic development, India has shown a strong commitment to the Sustainable Development Goals (SDG) Agenda. This paper focuses on the medium-term development challenges that South Asia, and in particular India, faces to ensure substantial progress along the SDGs by 2030. We estimate the additional spending needed in critical areas of human capital (health and education) and physical capital (water and sanitation, electricity, and roads). We document progress on these five sectors for India relative to other South Asian countries and discuss implications for policy and reform.
Mr. Younes Zouhar
,
Jon Jellema
,
Nora Lustig
, and
Mohamed Trabelsi
This paper explores the role of public expenditure in fostering inclusive growth. It starts with a presentation of salient features of public expenditure. Then, it lays out an analytical framework that describes the channels through which public expenditure affects inequality and poverty in the short and long term. Based on a review of the empirical literature, it discusses the policy options. Finally, the paper assesses the role of key factors such as the initial conditions, and the institutions, in shaping the inclusive spending policies.
International Monetary Fund. Asia and Pacific Dept
This 2018 Article IV Consultation highlights that Bhutan continued to make strides in raising per capita incomes and reducing poverty as it concluded the 11th Five Year Plan in 2018. Notably, poverty declined from 12 percent in 2012 to 8.2 percent, and extreme poverty fell to just 1.5 percent. The country is poised to transition to middle-income status, with per capita incomes at nearly US$3,600 in 2018, up from US$1,100 in 2004. Growth has remained robust, averaging 6 percent over the 11th Plan. In FY2018, growth is expected to slow to 5.8 percent from 7.4 percent in FY2017, reflecting slowing construction activity of hydropower projects set to come on stream in 2018 and beyond.
Davide Furceri
,
Jun Ge
,
Mr. Prakash Loungani
, and
Mr. Giovanni Melina
We construct unanticipated government spending shocks for 103 developing countries from 1990 to 2015 and study their effects on income distribution. We find that unanticipated fiscal consolidations lead to a long-lasting increase in income inequality, while fiscal expansions lower inequality. The results are robust to several measures of income distribution and size of the fiscal shocks, to an alternative identification strategy, across expansions and recessions and across country groups (low-income countries versus emerging markets). An additional contribution of the paper is the computation of the medium-term inequality multiplier. This is on average about 1 in our sample, meaning that a cumulative decrease in government spending of 1 percent of GDP over 5 years is associated with a cumulative increase in the Gini coefficient over the same period of about 1 percentage point. The multiplier is larger for total government expenditure than for public investment and consumption (with the former having larger effect), likely due to the redistributive role of transfers. Finally, we find that (unanticipated) fiscal consolidations lead to an increase in poverty.