This paper examines India's experience with fiscal rules with a view to inform the design of a possible successor fiscal framework to the FRBMA. Among several proposals to strengthen the FRBMA, a framework that focuses medium-term fiscal policy on debt sustainability by the use of a medium term...

Debt relief and the scaling up of aid to low-income countries should allow for greater fiscal space for expenditure programs to create long-term growth and lower poverty rates. But designing a suitable medium-term fiscal framework that fosters a sustainable delivery of better public services and...

Zambia’s 2005 Article IV Consultation and Third Review Under the Poverty Reduction and Growth Facility are discussed. Expenditure restraint, including on the wage bill, has helped to put the fiscal operations of the government on a sustainable course and contributed to the attainment of...

Performance under the Poverty Reduction and Growth Facility-supported program has been good. All quantitative performance criteria have been met. The economy has coped well with unfavorable external price developments. A substantial reform of the mechanism for determining cotton producer prices...

This 2005 Article IV Consultation highlights that monetary development in the Republic of Equatorial Guinea continues to be dominated by fiscal policy. Fiscal outcome was marked by an increase in the fiscal surplus in 2004 compared with 2003 on account of a stronger-than-expected revenue...

Unanticipated changes in commodity prices can generate significant movements in fiscal aggregates. This paper seeks to understand the dynamics of these fiscal movements in the context of transitory commodity price shocks using sample data from four CIS countries- two oil-producing and two...

This Selected Issues paper analyzes the strengths and weaknesses of the fiscal framework of Sweden, and discusses some guidelines for their modification. It describes the Swedish experience under the new fiscal framework, and documents the increasing expenditure profile during the economic boom....

For the past two years, the Democratic Republic of Congo has made considerable progress in consolidating its peace process, stabilizing its economic situation, and creating the conditions for sustainable economic growth and poverty reduction. The macroeconomic and fiscal performances under the...

This paper provides a perspective on how the IMF assesses a “sound fiscal policy,” focusing principally on industrial and emerging market economies. It observes six central criteria: the short-term fiscal policy stance, with greater emphasis on automatic stabilizers than discretionary fiscal...