Publication: Myanmar Public Expenditure Review 2017: Fiscal Space for Economic Growth
Date
2017
ISSN
Published
2017
Author(s)
World Bank Group
Abstract
Myanmar had a strong economic take off
between 2011 and 2015, but sustaining it will depend on
improvements to public services and infrastructure. Yet
general government spending at 15 percent of gross domestic
product (GDP) is much lower than what is needed to deliver
these improvements, and well below countries at a similar
level of development that spend over 20 percent of GDP on
public services. The first public expenditure review (PER)
for Myanmar found that since the country opened up in 2011,
it moved quickly to allocate considerably more resources to
priority public services. Macroeconomic challenges in the
past two years have contributed to deteriorating fiscal
conditions. Part of these challenges are structural -
Myanmar is dependent on commodity receipts, is prone to
natural disasters, and has a narrow production base. These
challenges are exacerbated by policy and institutional
capacity constraints. Fiscal buffers are limited by low
revenue (10 to 12 percent of GDP), with considerable
economic activity in either hard-to-tax sectors or dominated
by small and micro enterprises. On the potential for
reallocating resources, the PER analyzes: (i) the allocative
efficiency of capital expenditures, to identify options for
reprioritizing spending to higher-valued use, and the
productive efficiency of capital expenditures, to minimize
waste in project implementation; and (ii) the fiscal impact
of state economic enterprises (SEEs) to present a strategy
for the government to maximize returns from and minimize
subsidies to SEEs.
Citation
“World Bank Group. 2017. Myanmar Public Expenditure Review 2017: Fiscal Space for Economic Growth. © World Bank, Yangon. http://hdl.handle.net/10986/28392 License: CC BY 3.0 IGO.”