Samoa Public Expenditure Review Notes : Taking Stock of Expenditure Trends from FY06-FY12

Samoa's fiscal position and the structure of its budget have evolved markedly in recent years. Samoa had built up sufficient fiscal space in the early to mid-2000s to be able to respond to a major exogenous shock. The objective of the public e...

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Bibliographic Details
Main Author: World Bank
Format: Public Expenditure Review
Language:English
en_US
Published: Washington, DC 2014
Subjects:
Online Access:http://documents.worldbank.org/curated/en/2014/03/19393773/samoa-public-expenditure-review-notes-taking-stock-expenditure-trends-fy2006-fy12
http://hdl.handle.net/10986/18248
Description
Summary:Samoa's fiscal position and the structure of its budget have evolved markedly in recent years. Samoa had built up sufficient fiscal space in the early to mid-2000s to be able to respond to a major exogenous shock. The objective of the public expenditure review (PER) notes is to assist the Government of Samoa (GoS) in taking stock of the evolving expenditure trends in recent years and to strengthen the analytical basis for the management of public expenditure. Financial management information systems (FMIS) data was consistently classified and supplemented with project grant and loan related data from ministry of finance accounts to compile a full database of domestically and externally funded expenditure. The analysis of the public wage bill combines FMIS data with data from the payroll system. It also incorporates payroll data from the accounts of the largest public agencies to present approximate estimates of payroll trends for the whole government for the first time. This note will look backwards to take stock of the factors that accounted for fiscal expansion since FY2006, and look ahead to highlight the impact of cyclone Evan on the fiscal position from 2013 onwards. The first part of the note will review trends in public expenditure, revenues, grants, financing, and budget execution to provide insight into which aspects resource allocation have changed the most in real terms from 2006 to 2012, and decompose trends to identify the main drivers of growth in the budget. The second part of the note focuses on the impact of cyclone Evan on Samoa's fiscal position from 2013 onwards, and presents projections of the fiscal path in long-term in light of higher deficit and debt levels.