Publication: Recovering Growth: Rebuilding Dynamic Post‐COVID-19 Economies amid Fiscal Constraints
Loading...
Files in English
20,638 downloads
Published
2021-10-06
ISSN
Date
2021-10-04
Author(s)
Editor(s)
Abstract
After its worst economic crisis in 100 years, Latin America and the Caribbean countries are emerging from the COVID‐19 pandemic. The need to recover dynamic, inclusive, and sustainable growth to redress both the legacy of the pandemic and long‐standing social needs has never been more acute. However, despite progress in some areas, the region is facing a weaker recovery than expected given the favorable international tailwinds and is likely return to the low growth rates of the 2010s. Moreover, growth could be further slowed by both internal and external factors: the emergence of a new variant of the virus, a rise in international interest rates to combat global inflation, and high levels of debt in both the private and public sector. Beyond offering the current macroeconomic outlook of the region and the near‐term challenges it faces, this report explores three broad areas where growth‐advancing policies and reforms could be undertaken within a constrained fiscal context: mobilizing sources of revenue that appear to be growth-neutral; improving public spending efficiency to free up resources for other purposes; and reallocating spending to areas with highest growth and social impact.
Link to Data Set
Citation
“World Bank. 2021. Recovering Growth: Rebuilding Dynamic Post‐COVID-19 Economies amid Fiscal Constraints. LAC Semiannual Report;October 2021. © World Bank. http://hdl.handle.net/10986/36331 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 Renewing with Growth(Washington, DC: World Bank, 2021-03-29)Latin America and the Caribbean suffered the largest death toll from Covid‐19 across developing regions and the sharpest decline in economic activity. With fewer school days and lower employment rates, with higher public debt and more firms under stress, the effects could be long‐lasting. The crisis also triggered large‐scale economic restructuring, with productivity higher in the expanding than in the contracting sectors. Accelerated digitization could instill dynamism in finance, trade and labor markets, but it may amplify inequality within and across the countries in the region. Technology could transform the energy sector as well. Latin America and the Caribbean has the cleanest and potentially cheapest electricity generation matrix of all developing regions. But its electricity is the most expensive, due mainly to inefficiencies. Distributed generation within countries and electricity trade across countries, could make energy greener and cheaper, provided that the pricing is right.Publication Mexico Reform Agenda for Inclusive and Sustainable Growth(Washington, DC, 2013-06)Mexico needs to broaden and deepen its financial system without compromising the financial stability gains of the last decade. Much more private investment is needed to transform the economy to boost productivity, and despite improvements in recent years, many households and firms still lack adequate access to financial services. Strengthening competition and streamlining key regulations for firms are key to increasing Mexico's competitiveness. This note provides a medium-term agenda for supporting Mexico's competitiveness by fostering greater innovation. This policy note outlines short- and medium-term policy options for addressing critical challenges affecting labor markets in Mexico, and in particular labor productivity. This note reviews the challenges in Mexico's social protection system and possible options to achieve an integral and effective system that is more than the sum of its parts. This policy note contributes to the debate on Mexico's looming fiscal challenges. To achieve higher growth and reduce poverty and inequality, Mexico needs to improve public service delivery. This note assesses Mexico's pending subnational fiscal reform agenda. This note is structured as follows: chapter one is fostering sound financial sector development; chapter two is toward a more competitive business environment; chapter three is fostering innovation for productivity and competitiveness; chapter four gives labor markets for inclusive growth; chapter five deals with promoting an integral social protection system; chapter six deals with reducing the footprint of growth; chapter seven gives ways of using natural resources in an optimal way; chapter eight presents managing medium-term fiscal challenges; chapter nine deals with strengthening public revenue and expenditure management to enhance service delivery; and chapter ten is strengthening subnational public finance.Publication Poland - Public Expenditure Review : Analysis of Social Sectors and Public Wages(World Bank, 2010-03-08)This report looks at public spending on pensions, education, health, social assistance, labor market programs, and public wages. Presenting the findings of a series of studies and notes compiled sice April 2009, it highlights how reforming such spending, which comprises about one quarter of gross domestic product (GDP), is essential for mitigating the impact of the economic crisis and for transforming Poland from a welfare state to a workfare society in line with Government's Vision 2030. The report has two main messages. First, Poland can take measures to reduce public expenditures on social sectors and public wages by around 2.3 percentage points over the next three years. Second, beyond supporting the fiscal adjustment required in the context of the economic crisis, public expenditure reforms can also help bring about structural changes envisioned as part of the Government's strategy for 2030. This report provides a comprehensive assessment of Poland's social sector and public wage polices and lays out options for reform. The summary report has five parts. The first part lays out the macroeconomic context. It emphasizes that Poland has weathered the global economic crisis remarkably well but that the recovery is likely to be feeble and subject to uncertainty. The next part discusses the fiscal fallout of the crisis and argues that public expenditure reform should be a crucial pillar for fiscal consolidation. Sections three to five contain the main findings of the report. Section three presents a list of important reforms of public expenditures on social sectors and wages in support of Vision 2030. Section four simulates the fiscal impact of public expenditure reforms, with a particular focus on state budget expenditures. The final section discusses how institutional reforms in the areas of medium-term and performance-based budget can support the reform agenda. Volume two presents the detailed analyses of social sectors and institutional reforms of public finance.Publication Seychelles - Public Expenditure Review(World Bank, 2009-06-25)In 2008, after many years of unsustainable fiscal policy and a distorted and overvalued foreign exchange regime, the Government of Seychelles embarked upon a bold economic reform program. This program aims to put the economy on a path toward macroeconomic stability, liberalize the economy and to allow the private sector to take over from the state as the driving force in the economy. Seychelles, a small open, middle-income island state with relatively low incidence of poverty and near full employment, faced acute economic difficulties in 2008 as a result of past economic management exacerbated by the rising global oil and food prices and the downturn in the global economy. This resulted in missed debt-service payments and the subsequent downgrading of its credit rating by standard and poor's. Faced with current debt service difficulties and a historically poor credit track record, the authorities responded quickly by adopting a comprehensive reform program supported by a second year stand by arrangement with the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and commencing negotiations with Paris club and other private and official creditors for debt restructuring. The government has embarked upon a comprehensive reform strategy aimed at restoring internal and external balances with the assistance of the international financial institutions and development partners. The reform program includes: (i) the complete liberalization of the exchange rate regime and float of the currency (which was introduced in November 2008); and (ii) tightened fiscal policy, including improved targeting of the comprehensive social safety net and a privatization program to deal with the many state-owned enterprises. The focus of the public expenditure review (PER) reflects the fact that revisiting the role and functions of government lie at the heart of the economic reforms that need to take place in the next two years. This chapter provides a survey of recent developments, medium-term macroeconomic developments and their fiscal policy implications. Chapter two examines public expenditure trends and budget management issues. Chapters three, four, and five examine civil service reform, health care, and education issues respectively.Publication Mali Economic Update, Spring 2021(World Bank, Washington, DC, 2021-06-10)The twin shocks of the pandemic and the coup pushed the economy into a recession in 2020. Real GDP is estimated to contract by 2.0 percent (4.9 percent in per capita terms) in 2020. The containment measures from mid-March to early May 2020 hampered economic activity in the sectors that source critical imports from abroad, depend on international traveling and those more reliant on face-to-face interactions for service delivery. On the demand side, private consumption declined, due to lower remittance inflows, households’ response to the health hazard, and containment measures. Non-priority public investment was curtailed to accommodate COVID-related expenditures, and donor disengagement after the military coup. Inflation picked up in May and continued to rise due to low cereal output and supply chain disruptions. The fiscal deficit increased to 5.5 percent of GDP in 2020. The pandemic’s economic toll and the slowdown in international trade slowed domestic revenues. Authorities responded with an ambitious COVID-19 emergency response plan (2.3 percent of GDP). Therefore, both the spending increases, and revenue shortfalls contributed to a higher fiscal deficit. Meanwhile, external support from international communities were delayed after the military coup. Public debt subsequently increased to 44.1 percent of GDP. Notwithstanding this increase, Mali remained at moderate risk of debt stress with some space toabsorb shocks (joint IMF/World Bank Debt Sustainability Analysis (DSA), February 2020). The crisis offers an opportunity to build back educational systems stronger and more equitable than before. As rules around social distancing are gradually relaxed, systems need to ensure that schools reopen safely, student dropout is minimized, and learning recovery starts. An immediate policy option to focus on is the development and implementation of remedial education, accelerated learning programs, and revision of the academic calendar and examination schedules to allow effective school continuity particularly in poor and conflict areas. Medium-term policies in the aftermath of the pandemic will be the: (i) enhancement of the immediately established remote learning platforms within the ministry of national education and (ii) development of digital teaching content for each education level in full alignment with the existing curricula. Longer term policies would be to establish a virtual library with an inventory of national and international teaching resources to be used for remote learning programs to be delivered through existing channels (radio, television, mobile phone, and internet). These policies would make the country resilient to future disruptions. Given limited resources, policy prioritization, effective implementation should be emphasized and in line with a general framework of medium-term fiscal consolidation. A COVID-19 response plan was put in place in April 2020, with an uneven level of implementation. Lessons should be learnt with improved oversight of COVID-19 fund execution. Meanwhile, the enduring structural deficit and increasing resort to domestic short-term financing add to the risks on fiscal sustainability, which is further aggravated by the 2020 twin crises. The broad direction for fiscal policy changes points to the need to mobilize more domestic revenue and reform public spending to increase the fiscal space for higher quality services and investments, while reducing the overall deficit.
Users also downloaded
Showing related downloaded files
Publication Adaptation of the Calculator of Social and Environmental Impacts from Small-Scale Gold Mining in the Amazon(Washington, DC: World Bank, 2023-11-09)Over the past decade, illegal gold extraction has increased significantly in the Amazon region, partly due to the high international prices of this mineral, the less stringent attitude of some countries in relation to the environment and the pursuit of immediate economic opportunities. Furthermore, this illicit activity is closely intertwined with other illegal practices, such as drug trafficking, human trafficking, and the trafficking of endangered species. This has repercussions not just for the region's ecological wealth, but also for the physical well-being of those safeguarding their lands and the health of communities living in proximity to the extraction zones due to the contamination of their rivers and, consequently, their primary sources of food, such as fish. Despite the international effort to recognize the socio-environmental repercussions of this activity, there are still gaps on this issue, mainly due to the economic losses that this activity represents.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.Publication Multimorbidity(Washington, DC: World Bank, 2024-06-20)The demographic transition accompanied by the epidemiological transition, evidenced by the change in the health profile of the Brazilian population, brings important challenges to the Unified Health System. The accelerated aging of the population further accentuates the effects of the triple burden of diseases, placing society as a all in the face of this new reality. Important changes are underway, both economic and social. The Coronavirus pandemic has made this context even more complex, increasing inequalities, including in health, further impacting health services, which were excessively demanded in these three years, initially due to the global health challenge that found Brazil one of its most fertile grounds, and, subsequently, by the consequences left by the inevitable prioritization of the emerging disease, which led services to leave aside much of the care for chronic patients. Considering the gradual increase in the concomitant occurrence of multiple chronic diseases affecting the same individual, whether over the last few decades or throughout the citizen’s life, the current situation of multimorbidity deserves, at the very least, the attention of health authorities. This report characterizes multimorbidity in the country, presenting two examples of chronic disease management, one from the public sector and the other from the private sector.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 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.