Public-Private Partnerships and the Government’s Balance Sheet

 Posted by Tim Irwin[1]

Around the world, public-private partnerships (PPPs) are being used to build and maintain roads, hospitals, power plants, and many other kinds of valuable infrastructure. At the same time, they create problems for public financial management (PFM) because they often involve government guarantees or long-term payment commitments, which aren’t easy to manage using the traditional tools of PFM. Some of the steps that ministries of finance can take to solve these problems are the subject of a recently published IMF “How To” note, which grew out of work commissioned by the late Mario Pessoa.

Strengthening Fiscal Reporting in South Asia

Posted by Sailendra Pattanayak and Udaya Pant [1]

In September 2018, the IMF’s South Asia Regional Training and Technical Assistance Center (SARTTAC) organized two workshops in New Delhi, India on fiscal reporting. The first workshop was targeted at mid- and senior-level officials from the budget and treasury departments of SARTTAC’s six member countries (Bangladesh, Bhutan, India, Maldives, Nepal, and Sri Lanka) and a couple of Indian states. 30 officials, including 7 women participated in the workshop. The second workshop was a training event conducted in association with the Controller General of Accounts of the Indian Ministry of Finance. It involved 21 participants from various central government accounting services and the Office of the Comptroller and Auditor General of India.

The IMF Publishes its Fiscal Transparency Evaluation for Mexico

Posted by Sailendra Pattanayak¹

The IMF has just published a report that assesses Mexico’s fiscal transparency practices against the standards set by the IMF’s Fiscal Transparency Code. The report covers all four pillars: (I) Fiscal Reporting; (II) Fiscal Forecasting and Budgeting; (iii) Fiscal Risk Analysis and Management; and (IV) Resource Revenue Management. This is the first pilot evaluation of Pillar IV for a country with significant resource revenues. While identifying key strengths of Mexico’s fiscal transparency practices, the report also highlights several gaps and includes a sequenced action plan to address those gaps. The report can be accessed here: https://www.imf.org/en/Publications/CR/Issues/2018/10/03/Mexico-Fiscal-Transparency-Evaluation-46282.

The Wealth of Nations: Governments Can Better Manage What They Own and Owe

Posted by Vitor Gaspar, Jason Harris, and Alexander Tieman[1]

What is the state of your personal finances? You probably think first about your debts: your mortgage, your credit card balance, and your student loans. But you probably also think about how much cash is sitting in the bank, the value of your house, and the rest of your nest egg.

Dealing with Corruption in State-Owned Enterprises

Posted by Benoit Wiest and Concha Verdugo Yepes[1]

State-Owned Enterprises (SOEs) account for 22 percent of the world’s largest companies and are often located in sectors of strategic importance, such as oil and gas, telecommunications, ports, and public utilities. SOEs sometimes take the form of “natural monopolies” due to the large upfront fixed costs that are required to conduct business in industries such as electricity generation or railways.  A recently published OECD report on ‘State-Owned Enterprises and Corruption’ [https://doi.org/10.1787/9789264303058-en] concluded that almost half of the SOEs reviewed had experienced at least one case of corruption in the last three years. Average losses from corruption in nearly half of the companies surveyed amounted to 3 percent of annual corporate profits. In preparing the study, the OECD surveyed some 350 SOEs in 34 countries, identifying high-risk areas of corruption and the main impediments to reducing corruption. The report offers helpful practical solutions and policy responses for governments to consider.