Assessing Fiscal Space in Sub-Saharan Africa

Calderon, Cesar ; Chuhan-Pole, Punam ; Some, Yirbehogre Modeste

World Bank, Washington, DC

关键词: FISCAL TRENDS;    FISCAL SPACE;    PRIMARY SURPLUS;    GOVERNMENT DEBT;    EXTERNAL DEBT;   

DOI  :  10.1596/1813-9450-8390
RP-ID  :  WPS8390

学科分类：社会科学、人文和艺术（综合）

来源: World Bank Open Knowledge Repository

【 摘 要 】

This paper presents new empiricalevidence on how fiscal space in Sub-Saharan Africa hasevolved over the past 15 years. Fiscal space is amulti-dimensional concept that is proxied by indicatorscapturing aspects of fiscal sustainability, balance sheetvulnerabilities, external debt positions, and marketperception. The analysis relies on a new comprehensivedatabase developed on a wide array of indicators (28) for alarge set of countries in the world—of which 48 are inSub-Saharan Africa. The analysis finds that, breaking withhistory, Sub-Saharan African countries were able to conductcountercyclical policies amid the 2008–09 global financialcrisis, thanks to built-up liquidity and policy buffers. Theevidence shows that fiscal adjustment efforts in the regionwere reversed amid the 2014–16 plunge in commodity prices,and oil and minerals and metals exporters saw a sharpdeterioration in their primary balance sustainability gap.The paper finds a great deal of heterogeneity in thepost–global financial crisis evolution of the fiscal spacein the region. In countries with reduced fiscal space, theincrease in the number of tax years to repay the debt fullywas 1.1 years for the representative country, and in overone-third of the countries, this increase was more than onestandard deviation above the median.