Publication: Mexico - Fiscal Sustainability (Vol. 1 of 2) : Executive Summary
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2001-06-13
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2001-06-13
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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.
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“World Bank. 2001. Mexico - Fiscal Sustainability (Vol. 1 of 2) : Executive Summary. © World Bank. http://hdl.handle.net/10986/15503 License: CC BY 3.0 IGO.”
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Gross Domestic Product (GDP) growth reached 20.8 percent year-on-year (yoy) in Q3, following an outturn of 17.3 percent in Q2. Growth for the year as a whole will likely hit 15 percent, if not more, up from 6.4 percent in 2010, and is being pushed by infrastructure spending as Mongolia develops its vast mineral wealth. Inflation continues its upward trend. The trade deficit is close to record levels (US$ 1.4 bn in September using 12-month rolling sums) driven by a surge in mining-related equipment and fuel imports. Exports are growing strongly too, driven by large coal shipments to China. The 2012 budget continues this fiscal expansion and targets a 74 percent increase in expenditures (mostly on wages and social transfers).Publication India : Why Fiscal Adjustment Now(World Bank: Washington, DC, 2004-03)India's growth performance has been impressive over the last two decades. 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