Publication: Sudan: Rapid Assessment of the Public Investment Portfolio in the Fiscal Adjustment Context
Loading...
Other Files
148 downloads
Published
2011-10
ISSN
Date
2016-03-31
Author(s)
Editor(s)
Abstract
Public investment to facilitate growth and poverty reduction is paramount to Sudan's development challenge. The acute need for rebuilding the country's deteriorated infrastructure and service delivery framework underscores the importance of more active and effective public investment. The disproportional composition of the spending adjustment raises particular concern on pro-poor and public investment spending during the subsequent fiscal adjustment period expected to follow. Under the growing fiscal decentralization trend, the state governments have taken up the primary responsibility to provide basic public service deliveries to the poor; in such a decentralized constellation, reduced support from the federal budget could seriously jeopardize the provision of basic services at the state and locality level. In particular, public investment expenditure now has to effectively address service delivery needs and the broader development agenda, while at the same time the overall resource envelope is declining. This note is the result of a rapid assessment of Sudan's public investment portfolio in the context of the anticipated fiscal adjustment. It is not a full-fledged review on public investment projects or the public investment management system. The main scope of the assessment is: to quickly identify available information on public investment projects from existing sources; to provide an contextual overview of the overall public investment portfolio in light of the imminent needs for rationalizing the public investment portfolio; and to outline conceptual guidelines for public investment adjustments and to propose longer-term tasks to improve public investment management.
Link to Data Set
Citation
“World Bank. 2011. Sudan: Rapid Assessment of the Public Investment Portfolio in the Fiscal Adjustment Context. © World Bank. http://hdl.handle.net/10986/23978 License: CC BY 3.0 IGO.”
Digital Object Identifier
Associated URLs
Associated content
Other publications in this report series
Journal
Journal Volume
Journal Issue
Related items
Showing items related by metadata.
Publication Georgia - Public Expenditure Review : Managing Expenditure Pressures for Sustainability and Growth(Washington, DC, 2012-11)Economic growth has rebounded strongly in Georgia during 2010-12 and commendable fiscal consolidation has been implemented, although considerable medium-term macro-fiscal challenges remain. This public expenditure review (PER) considers possible sources of expenditure pressure that may affect the fiscal consolidation program and suggests options to manage them. This PER presents a number of options for consideration to manage fiscal consolidation, which can contribute toward greater selectivity in capital expenditures, enhanced sustainability of the road investment program, and containing medium-term social expenditure pressures. The rest of this synthesis report is in five chapters. Chapter first summarizes the macroeconomic context and assesses trade-offs associated in balancing the overall composition of public expenditures. The second and third chapters illustrate policy options and implications associated with containing social expenditure pressures and improving effectiveness of health expenditures, respectively. Chapter fourth reviews the international experience in strengthening capital budgeting and provides options for consideration for Georgia. Finally, the fifth chapter discusses options associated with rebalancing road sector expenditures.Publication Republic of Armenia Public Expenditure Review : Expanding the Fiscal Envelope(Washington, DC, 2014-05)Armenia's small revenue and spending envelopes limit the government's ability to influence the economy, even while its influence through laws, rules, and regulations is significant. The government has an important role to play to reduce poverty and boost shared prosperity, and needs fiscal space. This public expenditure review (PER) analyzes and provides recommendations for the different dimensions of expanding the fiscal envelope. There are three ways of creating fiscal space: the first is higher tax revenue mobilization (through better administration and enforcement of existing taxes, higher tax rates, or new taxes on previously untaxed goods and services or incomes), second, lower spending on less productive programs, and third, an increase in the effectiveness of spending, that is, a higher output of the things the government wants (efficient administration, human capital, services for the population) for a given level of spending. The report highlights Armeniaapos;s limited fiscal envelope, and points out that key areas, such as education, health, and road transport, had been consistently underfunded. It suggests that revenue needs to be significantly improved, and the government will have to revisit its expenditure priorities to create the spending headroom needed to at least maintain the spending level in these areas. The structure of the report is presented as follows: section one gives executive summary. Section two focuses on quantifying fiscal activities. Section three analyzes a number of tax exemptions and loopholes. Section four analyzes ways to improve the impact out of every Armenian dram raised and spent. Section five evaluates in detail the social protection system's performance. Section six accompanies the reforms of Armenia's public service remuneration system.Publication Ukraine Public Investment Management Performance Assessment 2012(Washington, DC, 2013)Ukraine has extensive public infrastructure inherited from the Soviet times but much of it has fallen into disrepair over the past decades and needs major rehabilitation or replacement so that growth may continue. Creating fiscal space for investing more is one of the critical tasks that facing the country, but a constrained fiscal space together with the use of investments as a stimulus for growth call for more efficiency in public investment management practices. There are a number of fundamental issues that need to be addressed if Ukraine is to make progress in its reform ambitions for public investment management (PIM). The most significant are: (1) most projects avoid scrutiny due to loopholes in classification (lack of definition of a public investment project); (2) there is no effective economic appraisal and appraisal review procedures in place due to limited human resource (HR) capacity, and no common technical standards; (3) the PIM system does not seem to block new projects from entering the budget but allows ministries to delay ongoing ones and squeeze in new ones; and (4) lack of strategic guidance with which to prioritize complicates project selection. One of the fundamental building blocks of a sound PIM system is a clear, legal definition of what counts as a public investment project and what does not. It should be pointed out that this already high discrepancy is only a comparative measure of input values. Developing projects that are output and performance driven should yield even greater efficiencies. Between 2000 and 2008, Ukraine was an average growth performer in a fast growing region, with gross domestic product (GDP) growth averaging 7 percent. As the global financial crisis hit the Ukrainian economy it contracted by 15 percent in 2009, exposing its underlying macroeconomic and structural vulnerabilities. As a result of the insufficient structural transformation and impact of the economic crisis, Ukraine now faces substantial fiscal pressures that threaten economic stability and growth. The Government of Ukraine recognized the need for a modern public financial management (PFM) system and put considerable emphasis on several aspects of PFM reforms. Training for the development of capacity in the PIM system is tricky in Ukraine. It is becoming clear that due to the dynamic nature of the Ukrainian civil service, officials are rapidly moving from one area of the Administration to another.Publication Sudan : World Bank Review of 2008 Budget Performance and 2009 Budget Preliminary Analysis(Washington, DC, 2009-05)As a follow-up to the first Public Expenditure Review (PER), this note reviews fiscal management by the Government of National Unity (GoNU) through 2008 budget performance, including pro-poor spending, and how do its main features compare to the fiscal management under the first phase of the post-CPA interim period (2005-07)? The note also runs through the highlights of the key features of the GoNU 2009 budget and what has been the impact of the global crisis on the budget performance through the first quarter. The main objective is to highlight fiscal lessons for the remaining period of the post-CPA interim period. The note is structured around the following six sections: review of the economic assumptions underlying the 2008 budgets, aggregate fiscal performance, revenue performance, expenditure performance, pro-poor spending, and the 2009 budget analysis followed by actual outturns through the first quarter.Publication Stabilization and Fiscal Empowerment : The Twin Challenges Facing India's States, Volume 2. Detailed Report(Washington, DC, 2004-05-10)India, home to more than one billion people, has experienced rapid growth over the past decade, averaging about six percent per year between 1992/93 and 2003/04. The agenda backed in this report is one that receives widespread support from both the central and state governments in India. The fiscal stress of the late nineties gave rise to an intense state-level reform effort. Six years on, this report documents the many initiatives undertaken by the states to restore fiscal sustainability, and become more effective agents of development. It outlines successes, lessons learnt, and highlights further challenges, on both the expenditure side (chapter two) and the revenue side (chapter three). It also looks at the incentive framework within which the states operate (chapter four), and asks whether there is a feasible reform package that will take the states not only out of fiscal crisis, but strengthened to meet the development challenges which confront them. This chapter provides the context for what follows by outlining the role and increasingly divergent performance of the state governments (section two), and then in turn, the genesis of the fiscal crisis (section three), its developmental impact (section four), the reform response of the state and central governments (section five), and the reform challenges facing the states today (section six). Although associated with an increase in public spending, the fiscal crisis weakened the developmental and poverty impact of state governments, especially in the poorer states; it also called into question India's overall fiscal sustainability. This report is written to help share the lessons and success-stories to date, and to assist states and the central government in implementing the national agenda of state-level fiscal stabilization and empowerment. Given the low levels and the worrying recent trends in both the quantity of expenditure in priority expenditure areas, and the quality of expenditure across the board, there is an urgent need for expenditure restructuring to free up fiscal resources and for reforms to improve the quality of spending. Focus in this chapter on areas where expenditure can be cut rather than where it should be increased is not because we think there are no areas of underfunding. However, which particular areas should be increased, and by how much, will likely vary from state to state, depending on initial conditions, and identified priorities. The areas where savings can be made have much more in common across states, and so are the focuses of this report.
Users also downloaded
Showing related downloaded files
Publication World Development Report 2006(Washington, DC, 2005)This year’s Word Development Report (WDR), the twenty-eighth, looks at the role of equity in the development process. It defines equity in terms of two basic principles. The first is equal opportunities: that a person’s chances in life should be determined by his or her talents and efforts, rather than by pre-determined circumstances such as race, gender, social or family background. The second principle is the avoidance of extreme deprivation in outcomes, particularly in health, education and consumption levels. This principle thus includes the objective of poverty reduction. The report’s main message is that, in the long run, the pursuit of equity and the pursuit of economic prosperity are complementary. In addition to detailed chapters exploring these and related issues, the Report contains selected data from the World Development Indicators 2005‹an appendix of economic and social data for over 200 countries. This Report offers practical insights for policymakers, executives, scholars, and all those with an interest in economic development.Publication Classroom Assessment to Support Foundational Literacy(Washington, DC: World Bank, 2025-03-21)This document focuses primarily on how classroom assessment activities can measure students’ literacy skills as they progress along a learning trajectory towards reading fluently and with comprehension by the end of primary school grades. The document addresses considerations regarding the design and implementation of early grade reading classroom assessment, provides examples of assessment activities from a variety of countries and contexts, and discusses the importance of incorporating classroom assessment practices into teacher training and professional development opportunities for teachers. The structure of the document is as follows. The first section presents definitions and addresses basic questions on classroom assessment. Section 2 covers the intersection between assessment and early grade reading by discussing how learning assessment can measure early grade reading skills following the reading learning trajectory. Section 3 compares some of the most common early grade literacy assessment tools with respect to the early grade reading skills and developmental phases. Section 4 of the document addresses teacher training considerations in developing, scoring, and using early grade reading assessment. Additional issues in assessing reading skills in the classroom and using assessment results to improve teaching and learning are reviewed in section 5. Throughout the document, country cases are presented to demonstrate how assessment activities can be implemented in the classroom in different contexts.Publication Argentina Country Climate and Development Report(World Bank, Washington, DC, 2022-11)The Argentina Country Climate and Development Report (CCDR) explores opportunities and identifies trade-offs for aligning Argentina’s growth and poverty reduction policies with its commitments on, and its ability to withstand, climate change. It assesses how the country can: reduce its vulnerability to climate shocks through targeted public and private investments and adequation of social protection. The report also shows how Argentina can seize the benefits of a global decarbonization path to sustain a more robust economic growth through further development of Argentina’s potential for renewable energy, energy efficiency actions, the lithium value chain, as well as climate-smart agriculture (and land use) options. Given Argentina’s context, this CCDR focuses on win-win policies and investments, which have large co-benefits or can contribute to raising the country’s growth while helping to adapt the economy, also considering how human capital actions can accompany a just transition.Publication Lebanon Economic Monitor, Fall 2022(Washington, DC, 2022-11)The economy continues to contract, albeit at a somewhat slower pace. Public finances improved in 2021, but only because spending collapsed faster than revenue generation. Testament to the continued atrophy of Lebanon’s economy, the Lebanese Pound continues to depreciate sharply. The sharp deterioration in the currency continues to drive surging inflation, in triple digits since July 2020, impacting the poor and vulnerable the most. An unprecedented institutional vacuum will likely further delay any agreement on crisis resolution and much needed reforms; this includes prior actions as part of the April 2022 International Monetary Fund (IMF) staff-level agreement (SLA). Divergent views among key stakeholders on how to distribute the financial losses remains the main bottleneck for reaching an agreement on a comprehensive reform agenda. Lebanon needs to urgently adopt a domestic, equitable, and comprehensive solution that is predicated on: (i) addressing upfront the balance sheet impairments, (ii) restoring liquidity, and (iii) adhering to sound global practices of bail-in solutions based on a hierarchy of creditors (starting with banks’ shareholders) that protects small depositors.Publication Digital Africa(Washington, DC: World Bank, 2023-03-13)All African countries need better and more jobs for their growing populations. "Digital Africa: Technological Transformation for Jobs" shows that broader use of productivity-enhancing, digital technologies by enterprises and households is imperative to generate such jobs, including for lower-skilled people. At the same time, it can support not only countries’ short-term objective of postpandemic economic recovery but also their vision of economic transformation with more inclusive growth. These outcomes are not automatic, however. Mobile internet availability has increased throughout the continent in recent years, but Africa’s uptake gap is the highest in the world. Areas with at least 3G mobile internet service now cover 84 percent of Africa’s population, but only 22 percent uses such services. And the average African business lags in the use of smartphones and computers as well as more sophisticated digital technologies that catalyze further productivity gains. Two issues explain the usage gap: affordability of these new technologies and willingness to use them. For the 40 percent of Africans below the extreme poverty line, mobile data plans alone would cost one-third of their incomes—in addition to the price of access devices, apps, and electricity. Data plans for small- and medium-size businesses are also more expensive than in other regions. Moreover, shortcomings in the quality of internet services—and in the supply of attractive, skills-appropriate apps that promote entrepreneurship and raise earnings—dampen people’s willingness to use them. For those countries already using these technologies, the development payoffs are significant. New empirical studies for this report add to the rapidly growing evidence that mobile internet availability directly raises enterprise productivity, increases jobs, and reduces poverty throughout Africa. To realize these and other benefits more widely, Africa’s countries must implement complementary and mutually reinforcing policies to strengthen both consumers’ ability to pay and willingness to use digital technologies. These interventions must prioritize productive use to generate large numbers of inclusive jobs in a region poised to benefit from a massive, youthful workforce—one projected to become the world’s largest by the end of this century.