Ghana's tax collection is low compared with other lower middle-income countries. Non-compliance of tax payments is an urgent issue in Ghana, as the government has been suffering from a widening fiscal deficit and a rising debt burden. Learning from experiences in other countries, this report...

The main message of this report is that Pakistan can take measures to increase the tax to gross domestic product (GDP) ratio by around 3.5 percentage points over the next five years. In order to ensure a healthy long-run economic development, Pakistan needs to embrace substantial changes in tax...

The collapse of Southern African Customs Union (SACU) revenue in 2009 has caused the Government to consider enhancing new sources of revenue in earnest to sustain its development policies. Existing plans that were prepared more than 5 years ago to introduce the Value-Added Tax (VAT) and create a...

"The authors describe the main trends of Brazil's fiscal policy during the past decade and analyze (1) the ability to raise the primary surplus in response to external shocks, (2) the pro-cyclical nature of fiscal policy, and (3) the long-run impact of government expenditure composition and...

This Public Expenditure Review analyzes trends in revenues, expenditures and development outcomes over the past 10 years. Its main findings are that, since the late 1990s, the Philippines has been caught in a low-revenue, low-expenditure trap and that the current level of public revenues is not...

Guinea-Bissau's large public sector wage bill poses a major threat to the country's macroeconomic stability: it hampers growth, limits the government's ability to service the domestic and external debt, and crowds out private investments. For this reason, the government decided in early 2006 to...

This Public Expenditure Review (PER) builds on the commitments of the 2003 Country Economic Memorandum (CEM), and 2002 Country Assistance Strategy (CAS) Progress Report, being its primary objective to assess strengths and weaknesses in key areas of public expenditure, and identify policy options...

The Kyrgyz Republic suffered severe shocks during the early years of independence, loosing its traditional markets in the Former Soviet Union republics, as well as substantial transfers and subsidies from the Soviet Union, that included a falling GDP during the first five years of transition....

The Kyrgyz Republic suffered severe shocks during the early years of independence, loosing its traditional markets in the Former Soviet Union republics, as well as substantial transfers and subsidies from the Soviet Union, that included a falling GDP during the first five years of transition....