Financing Public Infrastructure in Sub-Saharan Africa : Patterns and Emerging Issues, Cross-Country Annex

To be credible, any plan for scaling up infrastructure in Africa must rest on a thorough evaluation of how fiscal resources are allocated and financed. Because in every plausible scenario the public sector retains the lion's share of infrastru...

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Main Authors: Briceño-Garmendia, Cecilia, Smits, Karlis, Foster, Vivien
Format: Report
Language:English
en_US
Published: World Bank, Washington, DC 2017
Subjects:
Online Access:http://documents.worldbank.org/curated/en/937851468203361666/Cross-country-annex
http://hdl.handle.net/10986/28237
id okr-10986-28237
recordtype oai_dc
spelling okr-10986-282372021-04-23T14:04:47Z Financing Public Infrastructure in Sub-Saharan Africa : Patterns and Emerging Issues, Cross-Country Annex Briceño-Garmendia, Cecilia Smits, Karlis Foster, Vivien CAPITAL INVESTMENT DATA SETS GROSS DOMESTIC PRODUCT INCOME INTERNATIONAL DEVELOPMENT LICENSES LOW INCOME O&M POLICY REFORMS PUBLIC PUBLIC EXPENDITURE PUBLIC INFRASTRUCTURE SANITATION TRANSPORT TRANSPORT POLICY To be credible, any plan for scaling up infrastructure in Africa must rest on a thorough evaluation of how fiscal resources are allocated and financed. Because in every plausible scenario the public sector retains the lion's share of infrastructure financing, with private participation remaining limited, a central purpose of such an evaluation is to identify where and how fiscal resources can be better used if not increased without jeopardizing macroeconomic and fiscal stability. The stakes are high, because the magnitude of Africa's infrastructure needs carries a commensurate potential for misuse of scarce fiscal resources. The authors analyze recent public expenditure patterns to identify ways to make more fiscal resources available for infrastructure. The authors do this in three ways. First, we quantify the level and composition of public spending on infrastructure so as to match fiscal allocations to the particular characteristics of individual subsectors and to countries' macroeconomic type (low-income fragile, low-income no fragile, oil-exporting, and middle-income). Second, the authors evaluate public budgetary spending for infrastructure against macroeconomic conditions to get a sense of the scope for making additional fiscal resources available based on actual allocation decisions in recent years. And, third, the authors look for ways to make public spending for infrastructure more efficient, so as to better use existing resources. Any exercise of this kind encounters data limitations. First, because it was not feasible to visit all sub national entities, some decentralized infrastructure expenditures probably have been underrepresented, with particular implications for the water sector. Second, it was not always possible to fully identify which items of the budget are financed by donors, and contributions by nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) to rural infrastructure projects are likely to have been missed completely. Third, it was not always possible to obtain full financial statements for all of the infrastructure special funds that the authors identified. Fourth, accurate recording of annual changes in fixed capital formation (capital expenditure) of State-owned enterprises (SOEs) remains a methodological challenge. Fifth, accurate measurement of existing public infrastructure stock will require further methodological development. 2017-09-08T18:59:31Z 2017-09-08T18:59:31Z 2009 Report http://documents.worldbank.org/curated/en/937851468203361666/Cross-country-annex http://hdl.handle.net/10986/28237 English en_US CC BY 3.0 IGO http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/igo World Bank World Bank, Washington, DC Economic & Sector Work :: Recent Economic Developments in Infrastructure Economic & Sector Work Africa Sub-Saharan Africa
repository_type Digital Repository
institution_category Foreign Institution
institution Digital Repositories
building World Bank Open Knowledge Repository
collection World Bank
language English
en_US
topic CAPITAL INVESTMENT
DATA SETS
GROSS DOMESTIC PRODUCT
INCOME
INTERNATIONAL DEVELOPMENT
LICENSES
LOW INCOME
O&M
POLICY REFORMS
PUBLIC
PUBLIC EXPENDITURE
PUBLIC INFRASTRUCTURE
SANITATION
TRANSPORT
TRANSPORT POLICY
spellingShingle CAPITAL INVESTMENT
DATA SETS
GROSS DOMESTIC PRODUCT
INCOME
INTERNATIONAL DEVELOPMENT
LICENSES
LOW INCOME
O&M
POLICY REFORMS
PUBLIC
PUBLIC EXPENDITURE
PUBLIC INFRASTRUCTURE
SANITATION
TRANSPORT
TRANSPORT POLICY
Briceño-Garmendia, Cecilia
Smits, Karlis
Foster, Vivien
Financing Public Infrastructure in Sub-Saharan Africa : Patterns and Emerging Issues, Cross-Country Annex
geographic_facet Africa
Sub-Saharan Africa
description To be credible, any plan for scaling up infrastructure in Africa must rest on a thorough evaluation of how fiscal resources are allocated and financed. Because in every plausible scenario the public sector retains the lion's share of infrastructure financing, with private participation remaining limited, a central purpose of such an evaluation is to identify where and how fiscal resources can be better used if not increased without jeopardizing macroeconomic and fiscal stability. The stakes are high, because the magnitude of Africa's infrastructure needs carries a commensurate potential for misuse of scarce fiscal resources. The authors analyze recent public expenditure patterns to identify ways to make more fiscal resources available for infrastructure. The authors do this in three ways. First, we quantify the level and composition of public spending on infrastructure so as to match fiscal allocations to the particular characteristics of individual subsectors and to countries' macroeconomic type (low-income fragile, low-income no fragile, oil-exporting, and middle-income). Second, the authors evaluate public budgetary spending for infrastructure against macroeconomic conditions to get a sense of the scope for making additional fiscal resources available based on actual allocation decisions in recent years. And, third, the authors look for ways to make public spending for infrastructure more efficient, so as to better use existing resources. Any exercise of this kind encounters data limitations. First, because it was not feasible to visit all sub national entities, some decentralized infrastructure expenditures probably have been underrepresented, with particular implications for the water sector. Second, it was not always possible to fully identify which items of the budget are financed by donors, and contributions by nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) to rural infrastructure projects are likely to have been missed completely. Third, it was not always possible to obtain full financial statements for all of the infrastructure special funds that the authors identified. Fourth, accurate recording of annual changes in fixed capital formation (capital expenditure) of State-owned enterprises (SOEs) remains a methodological challenge. Fifth, accurate measurement of existing public infrastructure stock will require further methodological development.
format Report
author Briceño-Garmendia, Cecilia
Smits, Karlis
Foster, Vivien
author_facet Briceño-Garmendia, Cecilia
Smits, Karlis
Foster, Vivien
author_sort Briceño-Garmendia, Cecilia
title Financing Public Infrastructure in Sub-Saharan Africa : Patterns and Emerging Issues, Cross-Country Annex
title_short Financing Public Infrastructure in Sub-Saharan Africa : Patterns and Emerging Issues, Cross-Country Annex
title_full Financing Public Infrastructure in Sub-Saharan Africa : Patterns and Emerging Issues, Cross-Country Annex
title_fullStr Financing Public Infrastructure in Sub-Saharan Africa : Patterns and Emerging Issues, Cross-Country Annex
title_full_unstemmed Financing Public Infrastructure in Sub-Saharan Africa : Patterns and Emerging Issues, Cross-Country Annex
title_sort financing public infrastructure in sub-saharan africa : patterns and emerging issues, cross-country annex
publisher World Bank, Washington, DC
publishDate 2017
url http://documents.worldbank.org/curated/en/937851468203361666/Cross-country-annex
http://hdl.handle.net/10986/28237
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