Central America SocialExpenditures and Institutional Review : Honduras

World Bank

Washington, DC

关键词: INFANT MORTALITY RATES;    UNEMPLOYMENT RATES;    BASIC EDUCATION;    ECONOMIC GROWTH;    FORMAL EDUCATION;   

RP-ID  :  93739

学科分类：社会科学、人文和艺术（综合）

来源: World Bank Open Knowledge Repository

【 摘 要 】

Honduras has experienced moderateeconomic growth in the past decade, in line with the rest ofthe region. Despite this growth track record, limitedopportunities for decent jobs for the majority of workershave resulted in stagnant poverty and inequality rates thatare still the highest in Central America (CA). In parallel,progress in human development indicators has also been mixedin the last decade. In education, while primary enrollmenthas significantly increased, low coverage at all otherlevels of education, inequalities in access and low qualitypersist. In health, Honduras is close to achieving the 2015child mortality Millennium Development Goals (MDGs), butmaternal mortality, noncommunicable diseases (NCDs), andviolence pose additional challenges. And despite advances insetting up a social protection system, fiscal sustainabilityand lack of coordination among interventions prevail,undermining poverty reduction efforts. The ability of theHonduras government to expand safety nets, to increase theaccess and quality of public education and health services,to engage in active labor market policies, and to improvehuman development indicators in general, remains limited fora number of reasons. First, overall real social publicspending has been on the decline in the last few years.Second, low revenues and fiscal deterioration posechallenges to adequately financing needed social sectorimprovements. Third, challenges in budget formulation andexecution (mainly due to institutional factors) alsodiminish the impact of social spending. But moreimportantly, Honduras needs to significantly improve theeffectiveness and efficiency of its social spending. Thisnote argues that moving forward Honduras should prioritizethree main aspects: a) to rationalize and increase theeffectiveness of social public spending by enhancing thepro-poor features of targeting mechanisms; b) tosignificantly redress the imbalance between recurrentspending, especially the wage bill, and capital expenditure;and c) to continue strengthening information systemstools,legislation, and institutions in an effort to consolidateprograms into fewer and higher impact interventions.Sector-specific challenges aligned with these broadobjectives are addressed below.