Other ESW Reports

308 items available

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https://hdl.handle.net/10986/2209

This includes miscellaneous ESW types and pre-2003 ESW type reports that are subsequently completed and released.

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Indonesia : Selected Fiscal Issues in a New Era
(Washington, DC, 2003-02-14) World Bank
Despite the substantial progress in managing its fiscal challenges post-1997 financial crisis, Indonesia's risks to the budget have not disappeared, though the Government continues to be committed to fiscal consolidation. While debt sustainability is improving, the budget remains vulnerable to shocks, and, large non-discretionary spending (interest payments, transfers to the regions, personnel spending) still constrain the use of fiscal policy for macroeconomic stabilization, and social risk protection, and, as the fiscal situation improves, and decentralization proceeds, a rethinking of resource allocation becomes necessary. This report assesses Indonesia's progress in dealing with challenges that have altered the fiscal system since the crisis, and reviews options for fiscal consolidation, as well as sectoral issues in the new decentralized environment, including public expenditure management reforms. Suggestions include an increased revenue mobilization to make the budget more risk proof, and an improved tax administration, rather than streamlining the tax structure alone, while the Government's decision to eliminate the fuel subsidy remains critical for fiscal consolidation (which has little social implications). Moreover, the large interest payments burden incurred during the crisis, is crowding out development spending, and similarly, increased transfers to local governments are limiting discretionary spending (which could be accompanied by a decrease in central development spending in areas of regional responsibilities). A refinement of the budget management system is necessary, where the Finance Law would be instrumental in establishing accountability between the Executive, and Parliament.
Brazil : The New Growth Agenda, Volume 2. Detailed Report
(Washington, DC, 2002-12-31) World Bank
During the last century, Brazil was one of the fastest growing economies in the world. Between 1901 and 2000, Brazil's Gross Domestic Product (GDP) per capita grew at an average annual rate of 4.4 percent. Brazil's long-run growth has rivaled that of counties such as South Korea, universally praised as a stellar performer. Brazil does not received the same praise. Perhaps one reason is that more has been expected of Brazil, especially by Brazilians themselves. After all the country is richly endowed with natural resources and is blessed with an energetic people. Perhaps is that economic growth in Brazil has been more erratic than in other countries, or it may be that this economic growth performance has been accompanied by high inequality, thus diminishing the "quality" of growth. How is it that the country with the fastest growth in the region also has the highest inequality? Are the two facts related, and if so, what can be done to improve the pattern of future income growth across the social classes, and reduce its extreme inequality and the breadth and depth of its poverty? The first volume summarizes the overall conclusions for policy drawn from the seven background papers presented in the second volume, and other relevant research, as well as giving a historical account of the driving forces behind Brazilian growth since the 1960s.
Brazil : The New Growth Agenda, Volume 1. Policy Briefing
(Washington, DC, 2002-12-31) World Bank
During the last century, Brazil was one of the fastest growing economies in the world. Between 1901 and 2000, Brazil's Gross Domestic Product (GDP) per capita grew at an average annual rate of 4.4 percent. Brazil's long-run growth has rivaled that of counties such as South Korea, universally praised as a stellar performer. Brazil does not received the same praise. Perhaps one reason is that more has been expected of Brazil, especially by Brazilians themselves. After all the country is richly endowed with natural resources and is blessed with an energetic people. Perhaps is that economic growth in Brazil has been more erratic than in other countries, or it may be that this economic growth performance has been accompanied by high inequality, thus diminishing the "quality" of growth. How is it that the country with the fastest growth in the region also has the highest inequality? Are the two facts related, and if so, what can be done to improve the pattern of future income growth across the social classes, and reduce its extreme inequality and the breadth and depth of its poverty? The first volume summarizes the overall conclusions for policy drawn from the seven background papers presented in the second volume, and other relevant research, as well as giving a historical account of the driving forces behind Brazilian growth since the 1960s.
India - Maharashtra : Reorienting Government to Facilitate Growth and Reduce Poverty, Volume 2. Statistical Appendix, Other Annexes, and Workshop Programs
(Washington, DC, 2002-10-31) World Bank
Maharashtra's leadership position in India is under threat. The State is facing several bottlenecks to development: the private sector is no longer embracing Maharashtra and the public sector banks are increasingly reluctant to assist Maharashtra in its off-budget endeavors. Thus, the status quo is not an option. Regaining its leadership position is well within Maharashtra's reach. Among its many strengths are: the large pool of literate and skilled labor force, a well-developed financial system, a talented bureaucracy, and willingness to break with the ways of the past. If the State can successfully implement its reform agenda, it can quickly rebound and be back on the path of growth and prosperity. The lessons of the past decade suggest two guiding principles: First, the Government needs to articulate the message that its reforms are not to hurt, but to help the farmers. If reforms are to succeed, they have to be pro-farmer and pro-poor. Maharashtra's fiscal stress, be it due to power and irrigation subsidies or due to the losses in cotton and sugar interventions, has a close connection with the rural sector. However, as analyzed in Chapter 4, the current rural interventions are imposing a huge and unsustainable fiscal cost on the state, and more importantly, the bulk of the benefits are accruing to the rural rich. the challenge for the government, therefore, is to provide more efficient, equitable, and sustainable assistance to the rural poor. Second, the government's reform program needs to be designed and implemented with a medium- to long-term perspective. Piecemeal, short-term reforms can only bring short-term gains. The Government of Maharashtra faces a simple choice: to try to succeed in a difficult reform endeavor, or, since the policies of the past no longer work, to give up without trying and condemn itself to developmental and fiscal failure. Through its 2002-03 Budget Speech, the Government has indicated that it has chosen the former path. The quicker it moves along it, the greater the chances of success.
An Assignment of Local Service Delivery and Local Governments in Kenya
(Washington, DC, 2002-06-25) World Bank
The report examines the local government sector in Kenya, the reform and decentralization process, and the dynamics of local service delivery. The report is organized in three parts. The first, traces the broad contours of the reform process in Kenya: the inter-governmental system, local government and key local service sectors (such as water, roads, education, and health), and the macro reform processes (such as the public sector reforms, and the Kenya Constitution Review). The second part, reviews the existing systems for local service delivery, including aspects such as institutional arrangements, planning and financing for local services, and the structure, and finances of local governments. The third part focuses on a synthesis of key issues in the reform process, and discusses the strategic directions for both the Bank, and the Department of International Development (DFID), regarding future support to the Government of Kenya for improvements in local service delivery, and related local government reform.
Lithuania : Issues in Municipal Finance
(Washington, DC, 2002-05-16) World Bank
Since the establishment of Lithuania's independence, the country achieved substantial progress in transforming its local governments into independent units of Government: structural reforms to prod intergovernmental relations were made in 1994 and 1997, and will continue in 2002. Nevertheless, several issues remain, requiring particular attention from the Government. First, revenue and expenditure assignment between levels of government, and the degree of central regulation over local finance, needs to be reviewed. Local governments face fiscal constraints, for revenues are centrally collected, and distributed at centrally determined rates. And, although local governments have nominal authority over their expenditures, major items (salaries and welfare payments) are subject to Government control, resulting in local governments being faced with running arrears, or borrowing from the Government or private lenders. Although high per capita jurisdictions are required to share revenues with poorer counterparts, it is not clear that distribution mechanisms actually allocate revenues as needed. Upcoming reforms are likely to change this, but a greater change in the revenue distribution criteria, would be by funding delegated functions, but distributing according to sector-specific indicators of need, as well as budgeting financial availability. Second, financing capital investment may be improved by a greater fiscal autonomy to local governments, and mostly, by improving the quality of financial information, with reforms that include the separation of current, and capital accounts, and the adoption of accrual accounting for expenditures.
India's Transport Sector : The Challenges Ahead, Volume 2. Background papers
(Washington, DC, 2002-05-10) World Bank
India's transport system--especially surface transport--is seriously deficient, and its services are highly inefficient by international standards. The economic losses from congestion and poor roads are estimated at 120 to 300 billion rupees a year. This report takes a critical assessment of the key policy and institutional issues that continue to contribute to the poor performance of the transport sector in India. After an introduction, Chapter 2 provides an overview of rapid demand change and poor supply response, and the resulting adverse impacts on the Indian economy and society. Chapter 3 examines the causes of poor supply response by focusing on four major problems: unclear responsibilities, inadequate resource mobilization, poor asset management, and inadequate imposition of accountability. Chapter 4 reviews recent reforms and lessons learned. Chapter 5 proposes short to medium term actions for each of the main transport subsectors. Three factors make it particularly opportune time for India to expedite transport reform: 1) Initial reform momentum has been built up. 2) There is a growing consensus within India that transport should be managed as an economic sector. 3) There are many successful models for transport reform from around the world. The resistance to reform should be overcome considering the high cost of slow or inadequate action to the Indian economy and society.
Poverty in India : The Challenge of Uttar Pradesh
(Washington, DC, 2002-05-08) World Bank
The report analyzes poverty incidence in India and in particular, in Uttar Pradesh (UP), and defines its poverty levels, trends, and vulnerability. While UP once appeared positioned to be the pace-setter for India's economic, and social development in light of its rich potential in human, and natural resources, economic growth faltered in the 1990s. UP fell behind India's better performing states, and, despite a recent acceleration in growth suggesting the state's performance has been arrested, problems still remain. The report documents poverty along a number of dimensions, i.e., material and human deprivation, where poverty, if measured in terms of material deprivation, is high, and progress at reducing it, has been uneven over the past two decades. Statistics regarding human deprivation, reveal averages, e.g., in literacy well below the all-India average, likewise in female literacy, while mortality rates indicate a much higher ratio than in the country as a whole. Chapter 2 reviews the causes of poverty, stipulating poverty is caused by a scarcity of private assets, where ineffective social programs prevail. Governance, and the policy challenges are examined in Chapter 3, addressing the need to transform UP's public sector, through administrative and civil services reforms to reduce fragmentation, with complementary reforms at the sector levels to improve regulation. To achieve economic growth, Chapter 4 provides recommendations that include improvements in the investment climate, accelerated growth in rural areas, and corrections in gender bias, while Chapter 5 stresses on improving the quality, and access to social services, and safety nets.
Egypt : Social and Structural Review
(Washington, DC, 2001-06-20) World Bank
A social and structural review (SSR) identifies the strategic policy priorities that are likely to yield the highest returns in terms of poverty reduction and development. This SSR identifies those priorities by providing a systematic evaluation of economic policy and structure in order to identify a) the main constraints on poverty reduction and long run development in Egypt and b) the sources of vulnerability, particularly as Egypt considers further global integration through entering into foreign trade agreements. The five priorities for reform include: 1) In order to maintain Egypt's robust economic performance of the late 1990s, the Government will need to continue to maintain stability of the macroeconomic environment by strengthening economic management which may have been pushed off-course by exogenous shocks in the latter half of the 1990s. 2) Trade liberalization remains as an unfinished and critical area for further reform. By sharply reducing tariffs and other trade taxes, especially on manufactures, Egypt can achieve productivity gains and wage growth. 3) It is important to revisit government regulations that increase the cost of doing business in Egypt. 4) Expenditures of the bottom half of population appear to be fairly compressed. 5) The quality of life of population is in part determined by public services such as those that enhance health, education, sanitation, clean water, and air quality.
Mexico - Fiscal Sustainability (Vol. 1 of 2) : Executive Summary
(Washington, DC, 2001-06-13) World Bank
The study reviews the stabilization efforts, and successes that preceded, and have underpinned Mexico's sweeping market-oriented structural reforms since the late 1980s, anchored in strong fiscal adjustment. It seeks to support the Government's efforts, and provides a body of technical analysis, by: correcting fiscal trends for various business-cycle effects; building a simulation model to assess the sensitivity of the fiscal budget to exogenous shocks under structural scenarios; estimating the direct, and indirect potential impact on the fiscal accounts of closing public infrastructure gaps, and funding contingent liabilities; and, consolidating the financial accounts of the main public sector institutions to assess sustainability of their aggregate debt path. Following a brief review on fiscal issues, the report focuses on selected sources of fiscal instability. Chapter I questions the role of fiscal policy in determining output; the responsiveness of the fiscal policy to the business cycle; and, the "persistence" of fiscal policy vs. financing needs, implying the fiscal policy lacks a design that makes it a stabilizing feature of the economy. Chapters II and III investigate the impacts of major exogenous shocks, and provide estimates of the potential payoffs from increased investment in public infrastructure, calculating the optimal infrastructure stocks implied by the elasticity estimates. Chapter IV addresses the measurement of contingent liabilities, within the traditional budget accounting framework, while Chapter V provides estimates of the debt stock at the state level, suggesting disturbing trends in the size, and concentration of the debt are developing, and, sobering evidence on the health of the sub-national pension systems suggest a large percentage of these are either in actuarial deficit, or will be by 2001.